Starwatch: Compact
by CruxMDQ
Summary: Sequel to Starwatch. After the battle of the Citadel and Sovereign's defeat, the Citadel Spectres and the Alliance agency that succeeded Overwatch must pick up the pieces and gear up their efforts to prepare for the looming threat, while also dealing with the inertia of their parent governments, the machinations of shadowy forces, and competing initiatives.
1. Scene 4, act I

Freeport 74 - Attican Traverse

"Next!" a speaker set on the ceiling called out. The visitor hoisted his backpack and, heeding the call, walked into the security checkpoint.

"Put the bag down, stand on the square, and hold still," one of the Drell guards instructed, watching him like a hawk, his rifle pointed downwards but otherwise ready on his hands. "Anything to declare?"

"In my backpack, two weapons," the visitor answered.

The other two Drell walked forward. One frisked him thoroughly, while the other unzipped the backpack and checked its contents: a Haliat Armory sidearm and a carbine of the same make were effectively there. Other than that, the inspection yielded nothing. "What's brought you so far from Alliance territory?"

"Business," he replied. "I'm on a recruitment drive."

The guard standing a few steps away saw that the sensor scans had not picked anything noteworthy either, and frowned. "First time here, I see. Guns are not illegal here but don't go causing any trouble, or you'll go for a walk outside," he said sternly. "Otherwise, it's just common sense. Don't steal, don't pick fights, don't harass others. Clear? Or you need an explicit readout of the law here?"

The man shook his head. "It's perfectly fine for me, officer."

The guard gestured him onward with his rifle. "Come on in then. Welcome to Freeport 74."

Hiroshi Shimada nodded slightly in thanks and, now admitted, walked into the station proper.

* * *

Nos Astra — Illium

Anika Ziegler looked around. It had been almost a year since she had first set foot on that world, and the memories were rushing into her mind. Illium was the bustling place she recalled all too well, tons of people of all races and species on the streets, the skyways crowded thick with air cars…

"There is nothing to gain by giving in to grief," she heard Mercy say soothingly on her left earbud.

Anika wanted to tell the avatar of her mother to shut up, but she could not. Those words irritatingly echoed one of Javik's favorite dictums — lost are those who abandon themselves, he would say, his voice dripping contempt and scorn, but she knew Mercy meant differently.

"I miss them," was all she said.

Now she was walking up the steps to the entrance of this building alone. Nobody had come with her to Illium, other than the AI that had kept her company ever since Shepard had first encountered her on the Moon.

_I miss them._

The door to the apartment building slid sideways silently, and she walked in. An elevator, a turn to the left, then to count the doors… one, two, three…

She stood in front of the fourth door, and it slid open to reveal a small reception room, an Asari sitting behind a desk. "Oh, good morning, doctor Ziegler," she welcomed her with a smile. "I am Nyxeris. You are being expected. Please come in."

"Thank you. How is she?"

The smile faded away. "The usual. Keeping to herself."

* * *

The _Redoubtable_ — 2136 Porphoroi, Titan Nebula

Nihlus Kryik leaned on the lectern overlooking the hologram projector that usually depicted the galaxy map. Now the map was gone, replaced instead by the scans of an asteroid.

"It's isolated alright," he mused.

Next to him, Javik grunted his agreement. "If we had decided to come here instead…"

"We'd all be dead. Or worse." Jacqueline stood next to a silent Symmetra, her merciless eyes watching the asteroid hologram as the sensors mapped its features. Except for the tattoo-covered sides of her head, she was not bald anymore, her hair collected in a high topknot. She was clothed in a tank top, a leather jacket and some flak pants, a far cry from Alliance Navy regs.

Nihlus regarded her with ever-present wariness. Jacqueline Nought had never been the picture of discipline, and never would be. No one had failed to mention her overwhelming biotic power and her ferocity in battle — traits that only added to his caution. Subtlety was not her forte. She was not a scalpel, but a hammer, and he would rather have scalpels than hammers on his toolbox.

"No sources of heat or EM waves, but significant dark energy emissions," Stella informed, highlighting the sources of such emissions on the asteroid.

Shilyna's eyes narrowed. "Too concentrated for natural eezo veins."

Symmetra was not focused on the hologram proper. She had the output of the Redoubtable's sensors directly fed to her mind, and she was dissecting the thicket with surgical precision. "The larger asteroid was carved out from the inside," she reported in a tone not too dissimilar from Stella's. "No detonation pattern I know of can cleave fragments with perfectly straight edges."

About a minute later, the Redoubtable's sensors were able to pick up part of the machinery and installations inside the asteroid proper.

"Send in a probe first," Javik ordered. "We should get a closer look before going in."

"Agreed," Nihlus concurred.

* * *

Freeport 74

It was Hiroshi's first experience with freeports. Upon hearing about them, his initial conclusion had been that it was inevitable that places for outlaws and outcasts to lair about would spring up on the fringes of civilization, but now that he was in one he found himself questioning those thoughts. There were rowdy looking types alright, but the local guards seemed ubiquitous, their green and black armor always visible, always in groups of at least three members, and the place was clean and tidy, if not exactly crisp.

He had first visited the local Shadow Broker contact on the marketplace, a Volus loan shark called Taron Von, to get directions that would orient his search. That had given him a sample of everyday life in that city on the void. The permanent residents were organized along collectivist lines, and guaranteed food, living quarters, power, sanitation, security, and education in return for their work; the marketplace was mostly the province of either temporary visitors or those who could afford to pay rent for their quarters instead of working. There were more of those than the logic of that tightly knit community would have made room for, if anything because there was no shortage of well-off people who wanted to disappear for whatever reasons. The locals looked down on them, but as long as they paid their dues and they did not disturb the peace they were tolerated.

The info he had gotten had directed him precisely to a district populated mostly by such tenants. There were some bars and cafés there, and glimpses through the windows brought to memory the descriptions he had heard from the late Gabriel Reyes about the place — not a small part of the local patrons were derelicts of some kind or another, not too different from the drunkards and vagrants that infested many a lowlife pub back on Earth. Those were the outcasts, people who just sat there empty-faced, and nursed the same drinks seemingly day after day, apparently because they had nowhere else to go.

And leaving one such bar, one canister in hand, he saw the blue-skinned face that he was looking for.

The owner of the face saw him in turn, and a spark of recognition flickered briefly on those yellow eyes.

Then she walked away. Hiroshi followed after her.

Some hundred-odd steps and a few turns later, she stopped in front of a door.

_"Que fais-tu ici?"_ she asked him without looking.

"I was asked to look for you."

Lacroix took her time to answer.

"Mind your words," she warned. "She is not well."

The door slid open — and Shimada was treated to a scene of chaos. What he could see of the apartment was stuffed with crates, strewn clips of ammunition and thermal sinks, dirty clothing, small arms, parts belonging to no less than four different suits of armor, cuffs and restraints, some tinfoil bags of what only could be junk food, a speaker blaring an ancient rock and roll song, an exercising machine—

And Lena Oxton. She was lifting some weights on a bench, entirely nude except for a bracelet on her left upper arm containing a small chronal stabilization core, thick sweat covering her like a second skin. She did not turn around to welcome her visitor.

_"Lena, nous avons des invités."_

A snort punctuated another lift. "'Guests'?" A barking, unfriendly laugh. "More like someone coming to yank me back home."

Hiroshi kept Lacroix's warning in mind as he carefully framed his reply. "That would be your decision to make."

Lena recognized that voice but still did not stop. Her next words were without edges, though.

"How is your father?"

"Healthy as ever." The younger Shimada unslung his backpack and reached inside it for a cylindrical container. "He and Zenyatta asked me to bring you something."

Tracer continued with her routine for a minute. That her past was again reaching out grated her, but that was not Hiroshi's fault. With a groan, she put the weights back on their stands, stood up, and snatched the container off his hands. It was heavy, she noticed at once—

And as she opened it she saw why. There were three golden metal spheres inside.

The same three metal spheres Zenyatta had used years back to try and teach her about the dangers of isolation and emotional scarring.

Hiroshi was watching her intently, but he did not spot the hints of any reaction on her face.

She put the spheres back on their container — or tried to. These artifacts seemed to have a mind of their own, for they slipped off her hands and started circling her.

She snorted her annoyance and bent to open a small fridge next to the bench, pulling out two bottles, tossing one at her guest and emptying the other in a long pull. She then sat again on her bench and remained silent, her eyes absently following the golden spheres as they slowly gyrated around her head.

Hiroshi waited patiently, but Amélie's look warned him not to expect a word from Lena for the time being, so upon a tiny gesture, he followed her into a side room.

* * *

Nos Astra — Illium

Liara T'Soni sat idly by the window, clothed in a simple cotton robe and a pair of cheap slippers, looking at the bustling city outside with an absent expression to her face. It shocked Anika to see just how aged she looked, and yet at the same time, it was not that different from how she had appeared the last time she had seen her.

It had been on Shepard's and Reyes' funeral.

"Hello, Liara."

The Asari girl turned to look at her guest. Recognition flashed on her face and the tiniest hint of a welcoming smile appeared on her lips.

"Hello, doctor Ziegler. It's been some time."

The women approached and exchanged welcoming kisses, then they sat next to a table by the window. A moment later Nyxeris appeared with a tray bearing drinks and refreshments.

"You didn't need to bother yourself," Anika objected.

"Nonsense." Nyxeris smiled. "Liara hasn't had any guests in a while. Best to receive them properly."

The tea was quite good, Ziegler noticed with surprise, also realizing the girl had known she was not a coffee drinker. The pastry was excellent too. It surely cost a small fortune to get a serving of good apple pie here, and one done in proper German-style at that.

"I don't remember telling you how much I like this," she said to Liara. This elicited a smile that restored some color to the Asari's face.

"Noticing details is what I do, doctor." Then the smile faded away. "What I did."

Anika was saddened by that. "It hurts to see you like this."

Liara bowed her head slightly, but her face did not change. Her eyes were not on hers, but neither did she evade her gaze, instead looking vacantly at some point on the wall behind her.

And it really hurt Anika. Liara was about as lively as a withered flower. She felt that she had to do something, to say something to jolt her out of her depression, but what could she come up with that did not just twist the knife in the wound instead? That Shepard would hate to see her like this? That Reyes had been through the same — well, not quite, but close enough, and that he had overcome it…?

Nothing felt appropriate.

"I wish I knew how to help you."

"I know." Liara's face still did not change. "You wouldn't have come here in person otherwise. Unless you needed me for something." A smile appeared on her lips, but it was bitter, and painful to see. "For the good I would do."

That was too much to bear. "Now you're just whipping yourself."

No gesture punctuated Liara's retort. "I don't care."

"Then you should." Ziegler used the kind of tone a fellow physician would save for recalcitrant patients going to ridiculous lengths not to act on their best interest. "We could find someone else to consult with, and surely she would do an awesome job. But it wouldn't be you. You're a symbol of the Compact, and it's not the same without you. We need your presence there."

* * *

The _Redoubtable_ — 2136 Porphoroi, Titan Nebula

All eyes were on the hologram projector in the CIC. It was projecting a direct feed of the cameras mounted on the probes, and the picture was messy. Wrecked machinery, destroyed Geth and shot-up Krogan and Rachni corpses were everywhere.

"A battle's been fought here," Nihlus observed.

Javik grunted his agreement. "Someone beat us to this place. Let us find out who."

"Vulture flight Alpha one-dash-one, you're cleared for launch," Moreau said on the flight deck. "Good luck out there."

Aboard the Montauk dropship, Shilyna T'Perro acknowledged the message. "Understood. Thanks."

Next to her sat Mei-Ling Zhou, Jacqueline Nought, Symmetra, Shilu'Vael, and the omnic engineers, Brulirea and Lumiscant, along with the newest addition to the Compact. Orbak was a Batarian, a former bounty hunter and External Forces agent, a personal recruit of Javik's and one of many that had lost everything during Sovereign's onslaught at the Citadel.

Mei thought herself lucky, after a fashion. She was never short on things to be amazed of. On top of working next to a living fossil, she got a chance to learn about a species she had seen almost exclusively in the media. She remembered how both the Spectres and the Starwatch crew had strongly opposed the Prothean's choice, but Javik had personally vouched for him, and rather brutally told everyone else off — if they objected to his recruiting then they were free to leave. He would find people he could work with.

The Batarian was aware his position there was rather precarious until he proved himself, but he did not seem to mind. He was the first one to set foot outside the Montauk. He looked intently one way, then another, looking for dangers, and found none. Then he gestured for the rest of the squad to disembark.

His was also the first observation as he stopped next to the corpse of a Rachni. His headlamp was focused on the stump of the neck: the head of the monster and two of its limbs had been cleanly lopped off. "A blade would do this… but blades do not cauterize wounds."

"Reaper technology," Symmetra said in a clinical tone. "Molten metal fired at relativistic speeds can produce those effects."

Jacqueline frowned. "But then it means Reapers turned their guns on their goons… that would be a first."

The Batarian snorted. "Let's hope whatever did this is gone."

"I hear that," Shilyna agreed reluctantly.

"This whole rock is colder than a glacier," they heard Moreau's voice on the radio channel.

Javik was grim. As usual. "Stay on your toes. Never take anything for granted where Reapers are involved."

As their explorations continued, it became clear that this place indeed had been a fully-fledged shipyard, outfitted for the purpose of assembling and repairing starships with all manner of machinery and tools — including some they had never seen before.

Half a century back, one of Mei's signature quirks had been her tiny hovering companion, an assistant droid she had dubbed Snowball. One of the things that had kept her busy in the preceding months was reconstructing it, and seeing it again floating around her was a comforting sight. She had taken advantage of the enormously advanced tech now at her disposal and given it a whole slew of upgrades that included new tools, superior shielding and improved mobility, but she had chosen not to give it a voice. It had never needed one.

Now Snowball was again assisting her, following her eyes and highlighting with a lamp the places she looked at. Right now, those places were the different parts of an exotic machine that filled up an entire chamber. "It seems to be some sort of foundry for exotic alloys," she hazarded a guess. "I can only begin to imagine how it works."

"Abandoning this is stupid," T'Perro thought out loud. "If this is what Reapers use to make the metal for their hulls… leaving this for others to find was stupid."

"One can only wonder what went wrong."

The omnic engineers were cataloguing the remains. "For the most part, those left here were killed by Reaper ferrofluid beam weapons. The rest were blown to pieces," Brulirea reported.

Orbak made a quick inventory of the guns he had seen lying around. "They gave as good as they got," he said, his lamp focusing on the impacts on the walls and the machinery around. "But nothing has holes like that."

Shilyna grumbled. "We don't know what they were shooting at."

"Actually…" There was a lot of blood and ichor there, belonging to the dead Krogan and Rachni. Most of it. Shilu'Vael had noticed there were body parts and blood not belonging to either.

"Is this human tissue?" the Quarian asked.

Mei approached her. She looked pale. And her discomfort grew as Snowball shone some light on the human remains Shilu'Vael had found.

The Chinese scientist fought to box away her fright and focused on one such piece of remains. "There's… there's something odd here. That's human muscle tissue alright, but it's… that's circuitry. Embedded on the flesh."

T'Perro at once recognized what they had found. "That's the kind of stuff we fought back when we first met you. Reaper tech reanimating corpses. But this is the first time I see a reanimated human."

Snowball produced a small box and an instrument case from Mei's backpack and gave them to her. She thanked her assistant with a small grin, knelt by the remains and, using some tweezers from the case, retrieved a small piece and put it on the box. "We should run some tests. If the DNA isn't too degraded we can find out who it was and where he or she came from."

"Good idea," Symmetra approved.

* * *

Freeport 74

The side room actually was Widowmaker's own, Hiroshi realized. The contrast was glaring and unnerving: her quarters were as tidy as the rest of the flat was messy. Rifles and sidearms rested on racks on the walls, a scrupulously clean workbench on the side, the large bed the sole concession to comfort there — and the blooming red rose on some sort of hydroponic pot next to a portrait of Gérard the sole note of emotion.

Without a care in the world, she stripped, tossed her catsuit on a laundry basket, slid open a closet, chose a shirt and some shorts and put them on before speaking. "You're our second guest this month."

The ninja raised an eyebrow. "Who was the first?"

"Avitus Rix." She sat on the bed, leaving the single stool available for him to sit on. "He came here looking to recruit her."

Hiroshi did not bat an eye at that. "Who is he working for?"

"If Lena wanted to leave everything behind and start afresh somewhere, she would not get a better chance. That's all he said."

He dwelt upon this bit of news. "We knew he had come here looking for you, but not why."

Lacroix gave him a cool yellow glare. "And that's what you're here for."

The younger Shimada shrugged. "Yes and no. The message from Zenyatta and my father is genuine. But there is something afoot and Rix is part of it."

And you don't know who is behind it. Amélie did not need to say that out loud.

"How long has it been since Rix quit?" she asked instead.

"Not long after you," he answered slowly. "He said that he was tired down to the soles of his feet of working for the Council. Instead of compelling them to act, Sovereign's onslaught stunned them. He had drawn up plans, protocols and proposals to prepare for the invasion Shepard predicted, which he sent for them to approve, but they all went unanswered." After a pause, he decided to add: "Many have left. The Compact is smaller than it was."

Amélie dwelt on his words in silence. Hiroshi availed himself of the opportunity to appraise her. He had only seen her a few times, but it was clear even to him that a human had grown where once there had only been a ruthless assassin. She still was laconic to a fault, but now he could spot the glimmer of concern on her features.

"She can't go back yet," she said at last. "Being out here has helped her heal. But she's still brittle. She'll return when she's ready."

* * *

_Author's note: _my long-time editors and proofreaders, **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009, **contributed her usual tips and advice. Kudos to you, guys!


	2. Breadcrumbs

MSV Deliverance — Omega Nebula

Mei was busy running tests on the samples obtained on the derelict Reaper shipyard when Ziegler walked into her lab. Snowball perked up at once and chirped happily; that prompted its master to turn around: "Oh, hi, Anika!" she said gaily. "How was your trip?"

The blond Swiss smiled fleetingly. "Hello, Mei. It was fine, but it didn't work out." After a deep breath, she added: "Liara is just too depressed. I couldn't shake her out of it."

"Oh." She recalled what she had last seen of the young Asari. "So, no change at all."

Anika shook her head. "I know she was attached to Shepard, but I didn't imagine it would be so bad."

Mei thought for a little about what to say. Her dalliances as a teenager had been stupidly silly… not to mention distant. Those people would be in their senior years now. Her closest friends had been her fellow Antarctica scientists.

All of them dead at Reyes' hands.

A twinge of pain wracked her. She was still grappling with that. Trying to reconcile what the late Talon agent had done — the good and the bad. Almost sixty years had passed since Antarctica, but those events were achingly fresh for her. Except for the time spent in suspended animation, all of that had happened just scarcely a year hence.

"I didn't… I didn't have anything like that," she let out uncomfortably. "But losing my colleagues and friends…"

Anika nodded. "I can understand that." She changed subjects, aware of Mei's pain: "Javik told me of what you saw on that asteroid."

"Oh, about that…" The scientist straightened up. "I've sent requests to the Alliance Health Service to see if this poor man was a registered citizen, but I don't think that'll pan out. I hear there are tons of independent settlers out there on the Terminus and the Attican Traverse."

Ziegler bent her head slightly sideways. "Perhaps you should try talking to the people living on the Freeports too. Hiroshi knows about them."

Mei frowned, then understood: "Ah, they kind of know who's who on the fringe worlds?"

"So to speak. He said Freeports act as commercial hubs for many of those colonies. Plus, they are a paranoid lot. Everyone who visits them gets registered and searched."

"That's an excellent idea. I'll get on it right after I'm done with these tests here."

Anika approached her, careful not to touch anything. Mei's worktable was a chaos of flasks, instruments, tablet computers and samples on different stages of processing. "What are you working on?"

The Chinese scientist handed her a tablet computer. "Here. Look at this."

Anika watched with her brow knotted, trying to understand what unfolded before her eyes. Living—well, _dead_ muscle tissue now. But it was… _changing_. Before her eyes, individual fibers were being… transmuted? Into some kind of carbon-silicon mesh?

"What am I looking at here?" she said, though she suspected it. Incredible as the idea that hovered at the edges of her mind would be…

"Reaper nanotechnology."

Anika's eyes widened. "But… how?"

"That's what I've been asking myself for hours. No nanites, no exotic chemicals, no electromagnetic emissions. Nothing."

Anika looked at the recording again. She zoomed in to the point she could make the individual atoms of each molecule. And they were—were outright _transforming_ into different elements.

"But this is…"

"Impossible?" Mei chuckled. "Tell me about it."

Anika put the tablet down. She mentally reviewed what she knew of nanotechnology. She could tell in her sleep how the nanites used on her shots worked, down to the last detail. And she could understand the mechanisms of Sombra's and Reyes'. But there were none of the telltale signs of any such things on that recording. Not one.

And before taking that into account, what she had just seen was _way beyond_ the best the Alliance or the Citadel could achieve on that field.

"Is this nanotechnology at all?"

"Good question. You could as well call it magic, right? It's like a Philosopher's Stone, except it's real. You've seen it."

"If we… if we could figure out how it works…" _The possibilities…_

"I don't have half a clue. I'm going to stick with it for a little longer, but I get the feeling I'm just going to bash my head against the wall until I start hearing squishing sounds. I'm out of my depth here."

Ziegler smiled at that. "That has never stopped you before."

Snowball let out another happy chirp at that. Mei smiled in turn. "That's why I keep at it. I might strike gold."

"I have faith in you, but if you'll let me go grab some tea—" she said as she turned around "—I can stay here and help you out."

"Make it two cups!" the Chinese girl said eagerly. "If there's green tea here—"

"Don't get your hopes up, but I'll check." Then she was reminded of something: "You should get out of the lab later. Hiroshi talked to Amélie and Lena on that Freeport."

"You could have started with that! What did they say? Are they coming back?"

Anika shook her head slowly. "He said Amélie looked okay — better than what passes for usual for her, actually. She kind of has taken it upon herself to look after Lena, and Lena… he told me she's a mess."

* * *

The war room was small and uncomfortable, its seats cramped by human standards. But that was what they would have. Javik had ordered to avoid anchoring their assets on fixed locations, judging them safe only for as long as their enemy did not know about them — and had had the _Deliverance_, an otherwise nondescript Kowloon-class freighter towing two container assemblies, rebuilt from the ground up to serve as a mobile operations center. The end result was gritty and spartan.

There were only four people assembled there at the moment. Javik's uniqueness as the last surviving Prothean had made him a galactic celebrity overnight — and he had had no qualms about using his newfound fame to call out the governments of all major galactic entities for their lack of commitment, reluctance and outright opposition to confront the Reaper threat. Said governments had reacted in lukewarm fashion at best, but enough of their members had privately acknowledged him and given their backing — and so earned him enough support to relaunch the Compact anew with him at the helm.

The other three people present were the most important Spectres of each Council race: Nihlus Kryik, Shilyna T'Perro and Jondum Bau. There were also the holographic avatars of their Alliance counterparts — Admiral Steven Hackett and Colonel David Anderson. It was the Alliance officers that had called the meeting, and Javik hated meetings. Still, he knew them to be a necessity for these primitives without his psychometric talents… which of course were one of his most closely guarded secrets.

"We are all here," he said curtly. "What happened that required this conference?"

Both Hackett and Anderson were now used to his dry manners. They missed Shepard as the capable officer and leader she had been, too, and had resigned themselves to the change.

"There's been a development," Anderson replied. They watched him tap commands on his omni-tool, and another hologram appeared, this one a map of the Attican Traverse and part of the Terminus worlds. "Many independent colonies have sprung up here. Most of them fail, as you know. Alliance-sanctioned initiatives usually fare much better, but there's always people wanting to live outside of established society, so new colonies are founded almost weekly." Now several purple icons appeared on the map. "Our strength there is allocated to guarding official Alliance colonies, but we still try to keep an eye on the fringe worlds. The Zoners that run the Freeports don't really like us there, but they're working with us on this one. And together we're finding out that comm buoys are blinking out."

The Spectres exchanged glances. They all knew Anderson as a skilled and experienced officer. That comm buoys were blotted out of the sky was an everyday occurrence, especially in such lawless regions. He would not raise this issue without good cause.

"You've set us up for something," Bau quipped. "We're waiting."

Hackett answered instead. "Our comm buoys are outfitted to take note of traffic as part of our efforts to combat piracy in these regions. When they started going dark, both our teams and the Zoners' found them intact, but depowered and wiped clean.

"At first, we thought it could be some pirate gang trying to cover their tracks, but disabling the buoys like that without alerting us requires considerable skill. Our next step was to conduct recon sweeps to try and catch the perpetrators in the act, but those attempts met failure.

"Then the Zoners brought something new to our attention: there have been rumors and unconfirmed reports of sightings of strange ships on these sectors. Neither they nor we have been able to confirm them, but given that there is at least one Reaper ship unaccounted for, this is a cause for concern."

The Prothean studied the map. He knew some things the rest of those attending the meeting did not. Several buoys were on sectors where once his kin had secreted assets away. "Show me in which order the buoys were shut down."

A new hologram appeared then: Stella, the _Redoubtable's_ AI. "Commander Javik, I apologize for the interruption, but there's a message I believe you should hear," she informed in a cool voice. She knew the Prothean detested AIs and did not want to set him off.

Javik regarded the avatar coldly before bowing his head in a curt nod. "Then let us hear it."

A helmeted face appeared next. It belonged to a middle-aged man of severe features: the grim black eyes and the square jaw marked him unmistakably as a man in command _and_ in charge. "This is Malcolm Brock, commander of the Wings of Icarus. I believe you should be the first to learn about this. I was dispatched by my employer, Sagawa Tatsuya of Lucheng Interstellar, to his homeworld of Minamo after repeated failed attempts to communicate with the colonists. We have arrived at the main settlement of Kamihama only to find it empty. All the settlers are gone."

In parallel, Stella marked the location of Minamo on the galaxy map. It was roughly in the same area where the buoys had gone dark.

Bau frowned. "This escalated quickly."

Nihlus asked piercingly: "Did Brock attach some data to his message? Observations? Pictures?"

Stella answered by creating another hovering screen where a video started playing. Both the agents gathered in the war room and the human officers conferencing with them watched the footage in silence. The city in view was pristine. The video had been recorded shortly after dusk, and the lights started switching on as they watched — lamp posts, shop signs, domestic lighting. That only intensified the sheer _wrongness_ of what they saw. The place was intact. But the citizens had vanished in thin air.

The video focused on a Predator pistol lying on the grass. The person doing the recording picked it up: "It's been fired," a female voice said. They saw her scan it with her omni-tool. "Thirty-one hours ago."

"No battle damage." Nihlus was studying the footage intensely, his experienced eyes dissecting everything as he looked for patterns. He was right: there were no bullet holes, no scorch marks, no signs of any explosions.

Javik hid the unease that was creeping into him behind a stolid, arms-crossed facade. This was new. He had been born after the arrival of the Reapers and his entire existence had been one long study into asymmetric warfare, but nothing in the annals of his kind mentioned an entire colony popping right out of existence.

T'Perro asked guardedly: "Correct me if I'm wrong, but only humans lived here, am I right?"

"Yes. Minamo was a private enterprise set up by a conglomerate of small Japanese companies," was Stella's answer. "They are noted for being distrustful of other humans not of Japanese ancestry and borderline hostile to non-humans."

Bau spoke next: "I'll hate myself for stating the obvious, but there aren't any slavers that can capture a whole colony like this."

"Nothing is as obvious as we would like it to be," the Prothean quipped. "This once, however, I fail to see how you could be mistaken. We will pursue that line of inquiry nonetheless."

The Salarian stood up at once. "Then I'll put out some feelers. How many people lived there?"

"Around 3,500 permanent residents," Anderson answered.

"3,514," Stella said in agreement.

"That's not a haul you can move with just a couple of shuttles." Nihlus searched his memory. Many slaver rings lurked on those lawless worlds, but how many would be outfitted to quickly move about that many people? "The Blood Pack jumps to mind, but they aren't known for their subtlety. And yet… that's the perfect cover."

Bau followed his colleague's train of thought. "We're just getting started here. We'll examine what we find, and once we've discarded the impossible—"

"—what's left should be the truth," Anderson finished for him with a very short-lived hint of amusement in his voice. In another moment, he would have asked if the Salarian knew the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

* * *

The Citadel

The door flew as if propelled by a rocket, blowing right through the thick glass doors to the balcony. Tela Vasir was inside the apartment before then: "DON'T MOVE!"

The tenant, a Batarian, had a sidearm out. He was not intimidated: "What's the meaning of this!"

The former Spectre merely flicked her left hand and an unseen force knocked the gun away with a sickening crunching sound. The Batarian screamed and reached for his broken wrist with his good hand, but before he could do that another blow sent him flying right through a cabinet and against a wall. The impact knocked the breath out of him and he crumpled to the ground with a tortured groan.

"Waste my time again and the next one will be worse." The Asari picked him up by the collar of his suit. "Your contact. Who is he?"

Her quarry was injured, but not broken. He stared back through his pain. "I tell you and I just trade this beating for a worse one later," he spat. "Do your worst."

Vasir rolled her eyes. A few palm gestures, and the piping on the walls twisted around her target with ugly noises. The Batarian grunted but his defiance did not wane.

"In a while." She paced around him with deliberately slow steps, and spoke in a deceptively suave tone: "You see… time is important for me for the next few minutes. If you talk now, I can get some strings pulled. Save your sorry butt from jail. But if you don't… I'll have to do things the old fashioned way. And, Goddess help me, I hate doing things the old fashioned way. So, um, I may… need to blow off some steam." Her eyes were glacial, but her lips curved into a frighteningly dangerous smile that promised all kinds of pain. "After the next few minutes I can take *all* the time I want. So, go on. Stall me if you want. It's your head."

It was a terrifyingly effective act. And the Batarian believed it. "Th-the b-bedroom… M-my-my a-armoire…"

Her smile changed slightly. "Oh, thank you, citizen." She went to the bedroom and after a few minutes of inspecting clothes and shoes she found a small box in the pocket of a jacket. Carefully she took it, went back to the living room and held it before her captive with a raised eyebrow:

"It's-it's not locked, it's not-not trapped," her target stammered.

A 'friendly' nod. Inside the box there were a series of standard memory modules, universally compatible with any omni-tool. "Which?"

"The… the blue one…"

Vasir punched the blue card into the slot of her omni-tool. Her VI scanned it at once. Among other things, there was a contact book file there, and the VI cross-referenced the contents with a database of known and suspect agents of information brokers. There was a beeping sound: at least one hit.

The Asari bowed her head pleasantly. "Thank you for your cooperation, citizen. Now stand up." A lazy gesture of her hand and the piping that restrained her captive loosened with a jumble of plastic and metallic noises. "Best to get you elsewhere fast before your employer moves to plug the leak."

* * *

"So… _¿Qué has encontrado?_"

"Would you at least try not to add insult to injury?" Tela Vasir would not go as far as saying that she hated her current situation. In retrospect, she was happy and relieved that they had —kind of— let her off the hook in the first place, if the mind-numbingly huge stakes involved in the moment of her betrayal were considered. Thinking that she had been minutes away from enabling Saren's —and Sovereign's— ultimate victory never failed to cause her soul to groan at the impossibly heavy weight of the guilt consuming her.

And thus having to work under the infamous Sombra as her agent against the machinations of her competitor and Vasir's erstwhile employer was not that bad a way to work off that guilt.

Except that Sombra was _insufferably_ smug.

"_Bueno, está bien_… actually, what I'd like to know is your feel for it."

They were in one of Sombra's many bolt holes, a reconverted courier ship docked in an undeclared wharf on the lower wards. Her… handler? Was that the right word? Sombra was not her employer, really. The people who would someday decide her future had agreed to the hacker's suggestion and handed Vasir over to her care. And care for her she did — she had quarters on that ship, gear, guns, a well-stocked medbay, and even her choice of food and refreshments.

That only made it worse. Sombra never missed an opportunity to remind Tela Vasir that she was watching —literally— her every move.

The Asari snorted with annoyance. "Well, fine. For what's worth — as long as there's people willing to pay, there'll be someone selling out. The Broker merely had to tell big business who was that someone. Really, nothing new there."

Sombra did not miss a beat and watched her 'asset' with the enraptured attention of a child listening to a fantasy tale. "I have to agree with you. And the rest?"

Vasir looked at the hacker with cool eyes, then she sighed and turned away. "The rest… well, you've seen it. But I don't know what to make out of it. It doesn't happen that often. A lot of people would find it interesting, but more would want to know what kind of work is coming up that demands just that much capacity. And I don't have half a clue." Again she looked into Sombra's eyes coolly. "You know, don't you."

A smug smile, then her host stood up — and unexpectedly poked her in the nose. "Boop!"

A normal person would blink and pull back by reflex. Vasir did not. She stared relentlessly at Sombra instead. "That's not funny."

"Oh, come *on*, lighten up." The hacker paced to and fro in the small room. She knew other things, of course. Some of the data they had obtained from the Batarian was a report from an informant on the Shadow Broker's payroll. A quarter of the yards at Aephus had received orders to postpone their current projects and retool for upcoming work. Word was not yet out, but as Vasir had pointed out, it would cause a lot of upset and anger. She could picture how it would go: an angry businessman would rant at some Hierarchy officer or another, only to be told in a dry mixture of legal and military jargon to look at the fine print of the leasing agreement. While mostly rented out for commercial use, the shipyards still were under the jurisdiction of the gargantuan logistical machine powering the Turian Navy, and said agency had the authority to rearrange the schedule as it saw fit without warning.

It was strange alright. Something huge was coming. The Aephus shipyards were some of the biggest naval yards in the galaxy, and they worked to capacity every day of every year. Setting aside a whole _quarter _of them…

Mentally she reviewed the other recently learned tidbits. There was a change in Compact procurements, and Javik was covertly pushing efforts to commission a new ship. Apparently of his own design, and crewed by people he was in the process of handpicking himself with as much secrecy as possible. Were both things connected, she wondered. Most likely not. Unless it was something about as big as the _Destiny Ascension_, one ship was not the kind of work that would demand setting aside such a huge part of the installed capacity at Aephus.

Still, the hull, weapons and equipment alone did not make a ship. They also had to get crews. Spacefaring vessels were self-contained communities; larger ships that had to travel alone would have entire hydroponic decks to allow for trips lasting several years. If such a big piece of work was being commissioned, then provisions had to be taken to crew them as well, as Javik's efforts illustrated. She had not gotten any hints on that regard, but that was—

_Avitus Rix._

He had gone to Freeport 74 to try and recruit Tracer and Widowmaker.

The universe was too mind-bogglingly vast for coincidences.

Now, what was her competitor's take in all of this? She would have liked to ask him.

Vasir did not watch her. She fixed herself a meal in the meantime. She had long since learned to hold her curiosity in check — Sombra would turn her questions away with the perverse glee of someone watching a rodent hunt after cheese on a maze. Infuriating as it was, it had taught her a valuable lesson: she just did not know enough about her current line of work to entertain speculations.

But she had not earned a Spectre commission for being a muscle-brained lummox. Her intellect was as finely tuned as that of any former colleague of hers, and she could not placate it or discipline it for long.

It was part of her penitence. She was not trusted, and would not be trusted with the privilege of background intelligence for a long, long time.

Sombra headed for the door. "Take some time off. But don't go far. I'll be in touch."

Vasir grunted her acknowledgment and watched her leave. She always met Sombra in the flesh, without warning on the hacker's part and in situations when both women could go about their business without prying eyes. How she did it was yet another enigma she could not crack.

* * *

_Author's note:_ Kudos to **BrokenLifeCycle** for the proofreading and the suggestions. He helped make the quarantine more bearable.

Hope you've read my fiction at home. You didn't - _go home and stay home._ Don't take any chances with this whole coronavirus thing.


	3. Rising stakes

Illium

Nyxeris tapped a button on her tablet computer. "Doctor T'Soni, you have a visitor."

Liara did not answer for a few moments. She was in the bathtub, the hot water making her feel comfortably weightless. Her mind had been adrift for the past hour, seeking the solace of emptiness, and being roused back into the real world was not pleasant.

But then, she did not get guests all that often, Ziegler's recent visit notwithstanding. But that visit had been arranged beforehand, and having a guest come unannounced was totally unexpected.

"Who is it, Nyxeris?"

"A female turian. She said she's Garrus Vakarian's sister."

A very slight frown appeared on her brow as she queried her memory. To her knowledge, Garrus had a living father, a gruff Hierarchy officer by the name of Castis, and a sister he was not on good terms with, Solana. She had never contacted or messaged either, nor had any kind of relationship with them.

For them to know who their relative worked with was one thing, but tracking her down and coming in personally was a whole other kind of deal.

"Let her in and offer her some refreshments. I'll be there in a while."

"Yes, doctor."

Liara closed her eyes and her mind again gave itself to the all-consuming embrace of the piping-hot water. There was emptiness and blackness again for a few moments, until the opening notes of some music reached her, muffled by the wall. For an instant, she was vaguely surprised she could hear it in the first place—

—but no, how could it be? The whole flat was soundproofed — unless it was not and she had been scammed by a sleazy contractor, never an endangered species…

…then again, she was not familiar with the music, the style noisy and discordant, and something she would never listen to on her own. It still seemed to be coming from the living room…

The door slid open, and the loud blaring of the music flooded the bathroom, almost concealing the tinkling noises coming from the other side of the curtain, like a canister bouncing on the floor—

Without thinking she squeezed her eyes closed, cupped her ears, and sank deeper in the tub to shield herself — one and a half scant seconds before the flashbang grenade went off. The blast broke every glass on her flat, but being inside the tub shielded her from the worst of it — if not for that inkling she would be stunned and probably knocked out unconscious.

_What… what is going on…? _

By reflex, she remained motionless, except to slightly uncup her ears and open her eyes. Other than the loud electronic music, there were the crackling noises and flashes of flying sparks —the grenade had wrecked the lights, of course— but other than that she could not hear or see anything, half-concealed as she was by the semi-opaque curtain.

Then, with unreal clarity, evened if the all-out blaring music should have prevented it, she picked up a new noise. Footsteps. Someone was coming into the bathroom.

To finish the job.

The flash of biotics would give her away. She could not use them. But the attacker had to know she was in there, so there was no point in hiding.

It had been months since she had last exercised her biotic skills properly, and now she cursed herself for letting herself go like that — so it was an unexpected but welcome development when her talents responded eagerly. Her balled fist now became charged with enough energy to punch through a concrete wall. Further footsteps rang on the other side of the curtain, and a mechanical noise — the attacker about to shoot—

—but Liara acted first. Water blew into the air as if another bomb had gone off inside the tub as she stood up and tore through the curtains, seeking the noise by instinct—

—her punch connecting, knocking the assailant out of the bathroom. Something clattered on the floor, and her fingers closed around the grip. A pistol. A light weapon, heavy on the front. She brought it up and aimed without thinking—

—but her assailant dove and rolled out of the way, none of her first shots connecting. She rushed to the doorway and looked around, but probably her attacker was hiding behind the large couch—

—and from behind the large couch, another flashbang was tossed.

Her first impulse was to try to throw it right back at the assassin using biotics, but instead, the pistol clacked twice and the device blew in a shower of sparks and shrapnel. Without pause, the gun turned towards the couch and six rounds pierced through it. There was a scream cut short by another impact, which Liara took as a sign to run towards the couch and vault over it.

It had all happened too fast. The attacker had known the couch would only conceal her but not shield her against bullets — the reason for which she was almost hugging the floor — but that had not protected her. Half the rounds had struck her on the chest, one punching a hole through and leaving a bloody impact on a wall. The turian coughed as bluish froth appeared on her mouth.

The young asari dropped to her knees. "I'm… I'm sorry… Nyxeris? Get… get the first aid kit!" she called out. Nobody answered, and only then did she notice the loud music was still blaring all out in her living room. "Stop the music!" she yelled. The VI complied at once, and the only sound that was left was the ragging breaths of her attacker struggling to breathe.

The quart of adrenaline that had been pumped into her bloodstream faded away as quickly as it had flooded her. Nausea swept over her, then she bent over and threw up explosively. She coughed a few times, struggling to regain control of herself—

—then by the corner of the eye, she spotted the gleam of metal and barely had the energy to scamper out of the way—

"GODDESS—!"

—but not quite. The blade that would have stabbed her in the temple cut a deep gash on her left thigh instead.

Briefly, she saw red. "GODDESS TAKE YOU!" Another biotic punch and this time the turian's head turned to mush.

She stood up ungainly. "Nyx… Nyxeris?" she called out again. She was gone. She painstakingly limped towards the reception, only to find it empty. The entrance door to her flat was open.

She was still too shocked and dizzy to make a detailed examination, but the same part of her that had taken over and seen her through those horrifying four minutes had already reached a conclusion. Nyxeris had been an accomplice for this attack.

_Who… who attacked me? And why?_

She grimaced and limped back to her bedroom, where she had secreted an emergency medkit with some leftover supplies from her Compact days: a few nanite shots and doses of Alliance medigel. She put the sidearm down to open the kit, and as she glanced at the black suppressed pistol the vertigo of the experience flashed again through her mind in an instant.

And the next thought that crossed her mind was: _This is… this was not me. _

_This is what Shepard would have done._

* * *

Omega

"Hi, dad."

The holographically rendered face frowned. "When I spoke about getting reacquainted this is not what I had in mind."

Garrus Vakarian laughed quietly to himself. "Me neither. Funny how things turn out."

Castis looked into his son's eyes from the other side of the galaxy. "You had us all worried. Your sister was screaming to an officer just yesterday because of you."

The younger turian arched his eyebrows. "Solana did that?"

"Yes, because I told her I couldn't find you."

A long sigh. "Has it occurred to you that maybe I didn't want to be found?"

"And what purpose would that serve?" Castis' eyes bore into his son's. "All these years and still I have to hammer that point home? If you run away when things are hard—"

"Dad, I don't need lectures, alright? You worried about me, fine, I'm okay. If that's all there is—"

"Don't. Please don't." The older turian's face softened. "Okay, maybe that was unwarranted. I'm sorry."

That put Garrus momentarily off-balance. His father noticed it and laughed bitterly. "Yes, that's not the kind of thing you're used to from me, I know."

"…No. Okay… fine." He sighed again.

"Why didn't you want to be found?"

The younger Vakarian felt ashamed of himself. However sick and fed up and tired he felt, his father's point still stood. "I, uh… wanted to get away. From everything." Another long-drawn breath. "I don't have the right words to tell you just how tired I got. Rix and Nihlus and the others spent so much time trying to drill some sense into the Council. And for nothing… just words and promises but no concrete action."

"I'm surprised you didn't mention the Prothean."

"That's because he didn't talk. He was… doing things. Moving the pieces he had, I guess. But then he started getting help without telling us who was helping him, and making decisions on his own."

"And getting results?"

"…Yeah. I got angry." He inhaled deeply. "I realized I made the mistake of trying to go through channels. It never worked out well for me."

"Those channels exist for many good reasons, son."

"Dad, I'm not arguing about sociology with you. The truth is that doing things by the book always… always got me screwed. All the way back to damn C-Sec. The Spectres, the Compact, they got things done. But even they started getting platitudes and lip service."

"You have to help me here, son. What's this about screwing and lip service?"

Garrus cursed to himself. "Sorry, dad. Human figures of speech."

The older Vakarian grinned. "You got some of that rubbed off on you."

"Well, dad, I worked with them. And we *did* get things done." Again a sigh. "I miss those days."

"So why quit?" Castis asked. "Because you couldn't stand the Prothean?"

"That's one reason."

A disapproving frown. "You know what I think about it. Now tell me the others."

"Call it… I don't know, disappointment?" He exhaled slowly. "Every day I woke up, put on the uniform, punched in, and spent half of my day tied up to a desk. Then I find out Javik is doing stuff behind the scenes while keeping most of her crew off the loop."

The older Vakarian had to think a bit to infer the meaning of those idioms. "You should have confronted him."

"What makes you think I didn't?"

Castis facepalmed. "If you're running alone instead of with them…"

"I think you can imagine what happened."

"Then what are you going to do next?"

"In all honesty… I was thinking that you could help me find an ear willing to listen. You still got your Hierarchy uniform, you can get someone relevant to listen to you."

A bitter smile. "I knew you weren't just calling to make amends."

"Stow it, dad! I _meant_ to, okay?"

The unexpectedly harsh rebuttal caused the older Vakarian to blink. He stared for a couple of instants at his son. "Alright, son. I believe you. I shouldn't have said that."

Turians cannot bite their lips in human fashion, but Garrus would have done so if he were one. "Okay, dad. Sorry. I'm a bit on edge myself. Can you put me in touch with someone that will get things done?"

Castis cocked an eyebrow. "I have some weight, but really, nothing like you would. I'm not a hero and a galactic savior like you. But if you ask me to do it, then you have already tried and failed. So yes, son, I'll help you out."

"Please, dad. It's very important." Instantly he regretted those words. "Sorry. You know it, of course."

"You take care of yourself, son, please. And call your sister. Even if you don't see eye to eye she still looked for you vigorously."

Garrus clenched his jaw at that but acquiesced. Castis was absolutely right. "I will, dad, I promise. Thank you."

* * *

MSV _Deliverance_

Nihlus Kryik, a paragon among turians and everything a good Spectre aspired to be, was aghast. "Is this the plan you've been working on all this time?" he berated Javik. "A five-fold increase in military strength across the board? How in the name of whatever gods you worshipped do you expect this to happen?"

The prothean was impassive. He had foreseen that reaction. "Until better answers are available, this is our fallback proposal. I have said it myself before, in case you have forgotten it: the Reapers cannot be defeated in a stand-up fight."

"So why present some plan that won't pass scrutiny then?" Bau inquired piercingly.

"Time. I have spent time assessing the strengths of your militaries and your current scientific expertise. That much is what is needed to stall for time."

"Time for what?" The salarian's eyes were froglike but no less merciless for that.

"This." The hologram projector came alive to display a galactic map. A region on the core of the Terminus worlds was highlighted. "As you yourselves witnessed recently, the Reapers enjoy an overwhelming technological advantage. They will also have an overwhelming numerical advantage if your military strength does not improve before their arrival.

"Back when we were fighting them, an ever diminishing number of our brightest minds were tasked with figuring out the same answers. Traditional research did not suffice to bring us to an equal footing, as it will not suffice today. Thus, some of our scientists devoted themselves to finding out how the Reapers had come to be, and by whose hands. They sifted through the galaxy and managed to narrow down their search to these worlds."

"So we're going to entrust our future to xenoarchaeology?" T'Perro snorted.

"Looks like we're grasping for straws here," Anderson noted quietly.

"Because you are," Javik replied flatly. "I do not have any magical answers for you. Your best hope is not to retrace the steps of my kin, but to break new ground. You must continue where they left off."

"It would help us to know what they found out if we're to continue with their work," Bau pointed out.

"That much I can do for you." He tapped a command on his omni-tool. "I have prepared a dossier for your perusal. With great reluctance."

"That kind of attitude doesn't help."

"Being *paranoid* helps. Now that I have disseminated the workings of my fellow protheans, they are no longer a secret. If this information falls into the wrong hands, it could enable the agents of the enemy to seal our doom."

"You have little faith in us Spectres." Nihlus glared at Javik.

The prothean returned the glare. "Two of your number turned traitors: one outright succumbed to being indoctrinated by a Reaper, the other was compromised by a crime lord. So yes, I have little faith in you. It is up to you to prove me wrong. Now read."

The dossier was unexpectedly detailed. It consisted of a series of observations on archaeological diggings, sketched out in brief notes with little method or standard, the styles shifting notably from one to the next. Together, they painted the picture of a desperate quest for answers. They had first pulled off suicidal gambits to research Inusannon ruins on what now was batarian space, and that had led them into a costly and bloody chase that had finally produced clues to the cluster now highlighted on the map. By now, they were not looking for ruins, but for fossils instead. The final list detailed six hundred sites to prospect across almost as many stars, with only enough personnel and equipment to investigate three of them at most; with their backs against the wall and unable to stall the Reapers any further, they had thrown the dice — and lost.

Anderson was frustrated. "What do we have here? The finest the galaxy has to offer in special operations, plus the collected technical and cultural expertise of a dead—no, of a forerunner species, and the only strategy to deal with the Reapers is to simply put every able citizen under arms and hope we find a magical answer in some ruins?"

Javik wore his favorite nonplussed expression. "As you yourself said — you are grasping at straws."

The human officer felt his hackles rise. "'Us.' Not 'we.'"

"I am living on borrowed time. My civilization is already dead. I am trying to fulfill my duty by helping to save yours."

T'Perro reread the last few notes, then raised her eyes to stare at Javik: "What are you keeping from us?"

The prothean was inwardly pleased with himself. "You will have to live with that doubt."

The rest needed another second to catch on. Their asari colleague had a point: if he did not trust them and he had released that information to them, he discounted that eventually it would reach their enemy — and thus it would distract them from Javik's real plans.

Unless it was a bluff and those _were _his real plans.

* * *

While this meeting took place, Mei Ling-Zhou sat alone in her lab. A message from the Zoners confirmed that the remains they had found at the Reaper shipyard had belonged to a male settler of Ferris Fields, a tiny independent enclave near New Canton. The colony had dropped off the net without anyone noticing — until now.

No slaver could make entire colonies vanish without a single shot being fired. Humans were being targeted by an unseen enemy in the service of the Reapers.

She was the greenest among the Starwatch personnel, and the news she had just received confirmed that. She saw the horror that was unfolding with unreal and terrifying clarity — for some reason, it struck very close to home.

The door slid open then, and Jacqueline Nought walked in. "Hey, doc. What's — are you alright?"

"Oh. Hi, Jack… No, I'm not alright." She pushed the tablet computer across the desk.

The biotic frowned, then started reading. "Ferris Fields… another colony vanished… shit." She then looked at Mei more closely. "You had anyone close there, doc…?"

The Chinese girl shook her head. "No, no… honestly, the… other than here, the only close people I have are in this Freeport place Hiroshi-san visited."

"Tracer?"

"Yes."

Again the frown. "You look peaked as fuck."

"I… you know what happened to me, don't you?"

"Yeah. Reyes tried to eat you alive."

Jack's bluntness brought that horror to the fore with unexpected force. She shook her head in an attempt to dispel that wraith. "I was the last one left… nobody else could escape him. He didn't leave a trace of the others…"

The biotic got a glimpse of the dread haunting Mei. "Much like the settlers of these colonies…" Then something went _click: _"But Reyes is dead. He's… well, you were there."

"That _thing_ can never be taken for dead." For a moment she vividly recalled the panic of the attack on the asteroid base of Erinyes, standing on the inside of a hardlight bubble with Reyes next to her and a twisting, billowing cloud of black death on the other side. "Especially not when there were… _two_ of him." Again she shook her head. "I told Shepard I could never see him on our side."

That touched a fiber on Jack herself. She was silent for a moment, then sat on the other stool available in that lab. "It's not the same without the colonel."

"I'm hearing that a lot."

"Look around." Jack waved a hand around her. "How many people are left here? Tracer's gone. Liara, Garrus, Valena, Rix… Tali'Zorah too. Shilu'Vael stays to honor Shepard's memory. Her mother isn't going anywhere without her, she'd be gone too if not for that."

"And you?"

"Me?" A snort. "If I wasn't here I'd be a pirate, a hooker, a murderer or all three. There's no 'civilized' place for someone like me."

In the months following the battle for the Citadel, Mei had grown closer to all of Shepard's former crew. Jack kept the brash act, but Mei knew it was her way of coping as she battled the demons Cerberus had woven into her.

Jack was still trying to organize her thoughts. Wrestling with people was much, much easier than wrestling with words and feelings. "I owe it all to the colonel," she let out in a rare outburst of sincerity. "She broke me out and gave me a purpose."

"What happened to the people that…?"

Anger flashed on Jack's eyes. "That's a score to settle. Doctor Archer and the rest of the staff are being held in Arcturus. I get mails from time to time on them."

"Mails? Whose?"

"Sombra's, I think. Or maybe Miranda's." She clenched her fist briefly.

"Oh." A second's thought, then: "Awfully generous of Sombra if it's her."

"I think she lets me know they're locked up tight so that I won't leave my post here to gut them myself. But I got bigger fish to fry. I want to get my hands on Miranda and choke the truth out of her — just who it was that was giving out the orders." Again the fist-clenching. "That cheerleader bitch got away scot-free."

The Chinese scientist found asking about Jack's past helped keep hers at bay. "I think she deserves a break."

"Oh yeah? Spend your childhood locked up and tortured then let's see what you think about it."

_Ouch._ "Okay, point taken," she conceded. "Sorry." She could have said that Lawson had never taken action directly against her, but thought better of it. Her memory recalled something or other that had been said about Miranda having been in charge of the Teltin facility in the past, so that might not have been entirely correct.

Mei's comment had angered Jack, but the sincere apology left her without words to continue arguing. "S'okay," she said reluctantly.

"We still have problems that won't go away on their own," Mei said next, wanting to change subjects. "Two whole colonies have vanished." She scanned her report one last time and forwarded her discoveries and observations to Anderson, Javik and the Spectres. "If this isn't enough to get the Council moving, then nothing will."

Ziegler raced into the lab then. "Liara was attacked!" she almost screamed.

"What?!" both Jack and Mei let out in surprise. "How? When?" Mei demanded next.

* * *

_Author's note__:_ the usual but no less deserved thanks to **BrokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2009** for the comments, input and ideas.


	4. Escape

Nos Astra — Illium

Liara's left leg still ached, but urgency whispered that she could not wait for that to go away. _I've let myself fall too far already,_ she reproached herself forcefully. There were still a few straps to tighten and clasps to lock… there. The armor still fit her as snugly as when she had first donned it as a member of the Compact. And it was lightweight to boot. A properly fitting overcoat, some decent glasses, and it would take a discerning eye to notice it.

Quickly she reviewed her inventory. The sidearm once wielded by her attacker was an illegal copy of an Alliance M-11 Suppressor pistol. That in itself posed an enigma. The procedures and standards of Alliance equipment differed enough from their Citadel equivalents as to be considered alien. Furthermore, the human-omnic Alliance, by its very nature, made heavy use of AI on everything ranging from astrogation to manufacturing processes — brute forcing a fabricator into ignoring FRM restrictions for Alliance gear was a tall order. Why would anyone go to such an extent when Alliance ballistics technology was widely recognized to be behind the Citadel's was lost on her.

She still had roughly a dozen shots' worth of tissue reconstituting nanites and about as much medi-gel from her emergency first aid kit. She did not fear Alliance medical tech; Anika Ziegler had saved her life twice using it. She was slightly concerned about port authorities finding that gear on her, though. While not illegal given her credentials and history, it would bring unwanted attention her way, something to avoid even more than usual right now.

She also had cash in the form of chits redeemable at any currency trader that accepted Citadel credits, but she feared it was a bit on the lean side if she was to leave Illium and make it to Alliance space. The simple solution would be just to go to the bank, but Nyxeris had had access to just about everything, up to and including the passcodes to use her bank accounts and a power of attorney enabling her to tend to her legal matters in her stead. She had immediately revoked those, fearing her former secretary would seize the opportunity to pilfer her assets, but Nyxeris had not. _Why didn't she do it?_

_If she was an accessory to the attack then… what would I do in her stead?_

_Vanish. Go off the grid._

_Emptying my accounts would only leave a trail for me to follow. No, she doesn't need my money, she already has what she needs to disappear._

Bitterness gripped her momentarily, but it did not last long. Getting payback would be nice and all, but what she really wanted was to know who had arranged for this attack, and why.

_Sombra surely would know, or would know how to find out… if she hasn't contacted me yet, it's dangerous for her to do so…_

In one of their conversations, the hacker had told Shepard her foremost competitor and rival was none other than the Shadow Broker, and if Sombra's network and information sources were so pervasive she surely knew of the attack against her. If she knew, then she was not contacting her because her rival was involved and the Broker's influence in Illium was greater than Sombra's.

She shook her head to herself. It was inviting to believe that, but she did not have a single bit of solid data. That needed fixing, but first she had to follow the example of her traitorous secretary and vanish.

She closed the door to her flat behind her and walked to the elevators. Both of them were in use and… would stop right at her floor. She continued walking and opened the door to the stairwell, and stopped for a moment to listen. There were people climbing up the stairs, some six or seven flights below. As silently as she could, she walked down two floors, left the stairwell, and called an elevator then. It arrived quickly, and to her relief, empty.

The elevator took her to the first floor. There, she went again into the stairwell. Empty again. She walked down the stairs to the entrance level, and carefully looked around. Nobody.

Expecting to be spotted any time now, she walked into the entrance lobby. Through the windows she saw two patrol cars. A single officer was next to them.

It could not be helped. The building had one other exit on the vehicle bay, where her own car was. Surely it was being watched as well. Thus, she simply walked out through the front door, knowing she would attract the attention of the police officer, but fortune smiled on her: the officer was apparently busy looking at something on her data pad and did not notice her.

The next step was easy enough. She tapped her omni-tool and called a rental car. It arrived quickly, and Liara could not help but groan inwardly: the vehicle was a bright cherry red in color. Not the most discrete there was.

_It can't be helped._ She hopped in and—

"Miss?" a voice called out. Liara cursed to herself.

"Yes?" she turned around.

The police officer approached. "Are you Liara T'Soni?"

_It can't be helped._ "Yes. What is it?"

"An incident was reported in this building. A call specifically mentioned it happened in your flat." The officer frowned and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What can you tell me about it?"

A sequence of events sprang unbidden to Liara's mind. Her flat was almost completely soundproofed, so no one could have heard the grenade exploding. Especially since most of the neighboring flats were vacated at the time being, with the closest resident living two stories over her. Who would know of the attack then? Nyxeris, who else? And she had placed a call to make sure the police knew of the attack…

…and if they took her into custody, they would take her to the local precinct on a simple patrol car. Which, given how Illium was rowdier than most asari worlds, was armed and tougher than most.

But it would be an easy target for a gunship, of which there were plenty in mercenary employ.

Whoever had attacked was watching…?

She took off her glasses. "Officer, someone made an attempt on my life in my flat," she answered truthfully. "My own secretary was involved in the attack. I don't know where she went, but I know her. Nyxeris is thorough. She probably had a backup plan in case the first attempt failed."

The suspicion on the officer's face faded away slowly. An examining look. "You don't seem injured."

"You know who I am, and my past affiliations. I can defend myself. But I'm not safe here. If I had planned the attack, I would have left behind a watcher to spot where I go and try again when I'm most vulnerable."

"Then you should come with us." She tapped her omni-tool—

"Wait!" she interrupted her. "Officer, you will please excuse me for fearing that the police are infiltrated." In fright she realized as she spoke that this very policewoman could be an agent colluding with the party that had attacked her or with some other unsavory party, but the die had already been cast. "The less people know where I am, the better. If you fear for my safety or you suspect me, come with me and help me lay low. You can take me later into the precinct if you wish, but for now let's go on our own. Please."

Liara saw the face harden first. Then the officer rolled her eyes, bit her lips for an instant, then looked piercingly at her: "You don't stray out of sight."

"I need a friendly face now. Of course I won't."

A curt nod. "Okay then. Call me Dara."

T'Soni tried not to make her relief too evident. She still did not know whether she could trust this 'Dara'. "Thank you. We should get going."

"My patrol car is over here—"

Liara shook her head. "Not discrete enough." She walked instead towards the red car.

Dara snorted. "That's not much better."

"It's not a patrol car. Come on." She hopped into the driver's seat.

Dara sat next to her. "So what now?"

"We get to the closest transit hub, and change cars."

The officer's brow knotted briefly, then she understood. "Smart."

"Don't say it just yet. I'm sure we're being watched." The car took off and joined one of the busy skylanes. "Where's the closest transit hub?"

Dara tapped her omni-tool to bring up a map. "Tarsida station."

Part of the windshield to Liara's right lit up showing a partial map of Nos Astra. The Tarsida transit hub was three kilometers away. She bowed her agreement and focused on driving, her eyes jumping alternately between the rearview mirrors and the cameras looking over and below their car. She switched lanes three times and turned twice seemingly at random, all the time intently looking for tails—

"We're being followed."

Dara looked behind her shoulder. "Who?"

"The green car behind the one trailing us now."

The officer looked. Liara turned left at random—

"You're right." Dara fished a submachine gun from her satchel and snapped in a fresh thermal clip. Liara had never seen it, but still she recognized it as an Elanus M-9 Tempest. "I missed it. Sorry."

"Don't mention it," Liara answered without looking. Her mind was in overdrive. She was alternately watching for other cars backing up their tail, and assessing their route and goal against the likely objectives of the opposition. A tiny voice wondered where and when had she learned to think like that, but a much louder one told it to shut up and box its complaints until a better moment.

They proceeded unhindered for perhaps four hundred meters when Dara asked: "Turn right on the next intersection."

Liara did as told, then glanced at the officer. She was staring intently at the car: "There." She tapped her omni-tool and entered the alphanumeric code she had seen written on the side of the green car that was following them at a distance. "Another rental car," she said, half in frustration.

"Clever," was T'Soni's answer.

"I should call for backup," Dara said hesitatingly.

Liara's first impulse was to say no. But if the opposition was smart, they would surely know she would try to get out of sight, and switching cars on a transit hub was a smart way to shake off pursuers — so they would have people watching there. She cursed to herself. Lazing despondently for months on end would have allowed whoever wanted her dead to lay down some groundwork in preparation for this strike. _I should have listened to Anika,_ she thought bitterly. _But if Nyxeris was involved…_

"I have an idea," she said instead. She tapped her own omni-tool: "Call Zaeed Massani."

A small VI avatar appeared hovering over her left wrist. One moment, please. Calling…

"Massani? You know him?" Dara uttered in surprise.

"He was with us on the Citadel," she said offhandedly—

"TRUCK!" Dara screamed. Liara braked hard and dove sharply. The large cargo hover car that would have smashed them heads-on tried to follow but missed her narrowly. The car that had been behind them climbed in an instant reaction to try and dodge the truck — and an ill timed one, as they broke right into the lane over theirs and another car crashed onto them.

Then the rear windshield shattered as a hail of gunfire raked their car — but Liara's instant reaction was to deploy a barrier that shielded them.

"Goddess!" Dara uttered.

_"Take the wheel!"_ Liara shouted.

"Wait a—!"

_"DO IT!"_ She jumped into the back seat, drew her Suppressor pistol, and peeked behind them. The green car was right behind them now and closing in fast. A silhouette had popped from the left side and was aiming a rifle at them—

—but Liara got off her shot before the next barrage, and would later recall how incredible that shot had been: the pistol clacked twice in her hand, and a single bullet hole appeared on the windshield of the car chasing after them. She briefly caught sight of a head exploding in a shower of gore before the car banked left hard and crashed into the nearest building.

"How much further?" she asked Dara.

"Almost a kilometer!"

_Too far!_ "Let's just hope there are no more surprises," she muttered roughly. _Massani, where are you?!_

"Going to attract a lot of attention with the car like this," Dara noted. She was right: a car with its rear windshield shot to bits and riddled with bullet holes would not be very discrete. Tarsida was no longer an option.

Liara cursed to herself. _What to do, what to do?_ She glimpsed a construction site: "Go there! We'll call another car and hide there until it arrives!"

Dara did not like it but she could not offer any better. "I'm calling for backup."

T'Soni did not like it but could not suggest anything better either. "Right."

They parked their battered hover car next to a couple of trucks, but before they hopped off Dara realized something: "Just our luck. The Dantius towers."

Her companion stifled a sigh. "What is it?"

"The owner is a paranoid nutcase. There were complaints about the security mechs randomly shooting at passing cars."

"Then I won't have to explain myself if I crush them," Liara retorted. She was angry. If she had not been so lazy none of this would have happened. She gestured at Dara's omni-tool: "Are you calling in for backup or not?"

Before Dara could answer, the echo of a sound drew her attention — and her immediate reaction was to drag Liara by the wrist behind one of the trucks. The young T'Soni had learned better than to ask surprised 'what's going on?'s in such situations, so she stayed put and listened: gunshots. She exchanged a glance with the officer, who acknowledged her look with a finger to her lips before tapping commands on her omni-tool.

Dara spoke noiselessly: _Backup called._

_How long?_ Liara asked in the same fashion.

_I don't know. Minutes._

Again the echoes of gunfire reached them, then somewhere out of sight someone threw open a door violently and raced towards the parking lot with ragged breaths —

— and they caught sight of the running Salarian just before a gun barked three times and tracer rounds punched straight through its chest. The lanky alien fell with a painful scream.

Then the shooter walked into view: a LOKI mech, two more of them in tow. One noticed their car at once: _Unauthorized vehicle detected. Likelihood of unlawful entry: high. Beginning perimeter sweep._

Liara rolled her eyes again. This day was surprise piled on surprise, and so far none had been pleasant.

Dara looked at her and pointed her index finger at the ground once, hard, before walking into the open brandishing her Tempest submachine gun. "Illium police!" she called out. "I'm officer Dara! Where's—"

_Intruder detected! Elimination in progress—_

The asari officer had half-expected that, and thus she got off the first shot. The Tempest boasted a high rate of fire but was notoriously difficult to handle if not used in short bursts, and Dara was proficient in its use. The head of the first mech blew in pieces, and a moment later a second one collapsed face-first into the ground after a hail of tracers tore through its chest.

But there was still one more—

—plus three more walking into the parking lot from the same doors the Salarian had thrown open. Her shields could absorb fire from one gun, but four guns opened on her before she could reach sanctuary.

Liara intervened then. Hover cars, when at rest, usually floated some comfortable thirty-odd centimeters from whatever surface is below them, but the shot-up vehicle they had driven to that tower suddenly jumped two meters upwards—

—before blazing towards the mechs like a speeding rocket, turning three of them into chaff and knocking the fourth off the building outright.

Painstakingly she stood up. Tossing a whole hover car in that fashion had almost totally sapped her stamina. She would not be able to perform that feat again any time soon, but anything less and Dara would be dead instead of lying on her back and clutching her stomach. Her shields simply were not meant to absorb that kind of punishment.

"Don't… worry," she said between gasps as she reached for her first aid kit, then with trembling hands she undid the clasps and unfastened the straps of her armor. Her chest and belly were a mess of bullet wounds, no less than nine rounds having pierced through her. She grimaced in horror. Liara was not Anika Ziegler; she knew the Swiss doctor could somehow fix that, but she was not Anika, so she did what best she could: she plastered medi-gel liberally into the wounds, staunching the bleeding, then she stabbed two nanite syrettes into her chest.

Then the noises of more mechs coming from inside the building reached her.

She swore to herself. "Goddess…" Carefully she dragged the injured officer away and behind one of the trucks. "I'm going to… to hold them off," she told her. "Stay put… Mind if—if I grab your gun?"

Dara was predictably in shock, and only further surprised by how the scientist had dressed her wounds. She shook her head weakly and tried to gesture with her hand, but she did not have strength for even that little. "It's okay," Liara whispered. "Don't exert yourself."

Still panting, she raced for the door into the building. LOKI mechs were not omnics. Constrained by Citadel laws limiting AI development, they were run by much less capable VIs instead, but it is an universally accepted truth that imposing hard limits on engineers only stimulates their creativity — and almost infinite hours of work and effort trying to squeeze every bit of efficiency possible out of stringently regulated software meant that these security mechs were opponents about as crafty as recruits freshly off basic training.

As recruits not affected by morale or exhaustion, that was. If the mechs broke into the open they would use their numerical advantage to pin her down and flank her, whereas if she got to the door first she would have a strong defensive position and could corral her enemies into a more manageable environment…

She got to the door the moment one of the mechs walked into view from a sideway. Immediately she squeezed off a Tempest burst that only grazed her enemy but forced it to retreat behind a large crate. Another robotic head popped from around the sideway, then a sidearm followed — but another burst, this time murderously accurate, separated head, arm and weapon from their frame.

New mechanical footsteps rang next, ponderous and heavy. Liara recognized the noise at once and felt a shiver run down her spine. She could not fight an YMIR mech with the light weapons at her disposal—

The huge bulk of the robot stomped into view, and at once flooded the hallway with a lethal stream of tracers. Liara withdrew from the line of fire, yet still heard the heavy servos trudging slowly but steadily towards the door, and it was only a matter of time before the monster reached her position. Her only chance was to wait for it to swap thermal clips—

—and the moment that happened, she looked around the corner, trained her Suppressor on the robot's optics—

—and pulled the trigger as the missile launcher mounted on the other arm of the mech blazed with exhaust gases. She dove for dear life and rolled away as the guided rocket whizzed past her, sought cover behind a parked hover truck, and listened. The heavy steps were now approaching the door.

The YMIR mech came into view. The optics were irreparably damaged, but the monstrous robot still moved with unerring certainty. A few taps on her omni-tool and a very quick scan told her the mech was tapping into the building's security network to navigate the terrain and hunt her.

_If only I could use biotics again,_ she thought bitterly as her brains raced. The scan had pinpointed a few signal sources she could try and disable with gunfire, but there was no guarantee that would work. She had to damage the comm gear on the mech. Three separate antennae and sensors, all on difficult places for her to hit without running suicidal risks—

—but that was the best she could do with the limited means at her disposal. She climbed silently atop a truck, programmed the omni-tool to directly feed targeting data to her retinas via lasers, and peeked from the relative safety of the cargo compartment. Her enemy was now in the open, the machine gun pointed in her general direction but not having yet acquired her. The mech had to turn right to walk towards her, and in doing so would very briefly expose one of the weak points to her…

Slowly she brought up the Suppressor again. _It has to be an absolutely perfect shot… there is no second chance…_

A bright orange alert flashed on her retinas. Liara squeezed the trigger. The pistol clacked once — and immediately the huge machine gun acquired her. Again she had less than a heartbeat to dive to safety. She heard the stream of bullets bouncing off the thick sheet metal of the cargo compartment—for just a second—

—then her instincts screamed at the impending danger and she had another heartbeat's worth of time to jump out of the cargo compartment before a missile blew the truck apart. The explosion almost knocked her prone, but she still managed to hide behind the other truck before the machine gun again opened up on her.

That cover would not last for long, she told herself in panic. _How many missiles does that thing have?!_ The bullets bounced off the truck's thick metal plate endlessly—

_It's not walking!_

Her shot had been even better than she had thought. She had taken careful aim at the neck armor joints, aiming to punch through the less resistant ablative mail that protected the servos to hit a critical sensor linking located there, but the pistol round had caromed within the armored frame of the mech and inflicted severe damage to its hydraulics system.

Against her better judgment, she waited several seconds for the gunfire to stop — and it did not. The mech was damaged, but not disabled, and it would now pin her down there with suppressing fire to allow for the smaller LOKIs to finish the job.

If she let them do it, that was. She was not going to make it any simpler to them. She went around the side of the truck — and dropped a LOKI mech caught in the open approaching her position with a short burst. Machine gun fire from the YMIR raked her position an instant later, her biotic barrier flashing angrily as some of the rounds punched through the metal plating of the truck. She pulled back, went back around the truck—

—but the mechs had already gained that position, and half a dozen guns opened up on a barrage on her. "GODDESS!"

She withdrew from the line of fire, aware of the YMIR raining an uninterrupted torrent of slugs merely a couple of steps behind her back. The adrenaline flooding her bloodstream boosted her stamina momentarily, and that alone kept her fighting — and while it did not do much to restore her biotic strength, it did give her a last reserve to tap into. She blazed with blue fire one final time, and a coruscating singularity appeared amidst her attackers. A last lancing strike and the pulsing orb exploded violently, sending the helpless mechs flying in small pieces—

—then more gunfire rained on her from above. Her barrier absorbed part of it, but a burst still transfixed her on the left arm and shoulder. She gasped as the software suite on her armor triggered all manner of alerts on her ears, then turned around and unleashed a long barrage at the LOKI mechs that had fired at her from atop the truck—

—but more shots now lanced through her legs. She screamed in pain and anger, but now she was hamstrung and could only look helplessly on as the LOKI mechs advanced on her, weapons trained on the prone intruder—

—then two loud booms rang in short succession, and the closest LOKI was blown to bits. Another explosion, and another of her assailants collapsed limply with a huge hole on the chest. The remaining mechs turned around, seeking their attackers, but before they could react bright blue ribbons scythed through them in a dizzying dance of lights.

Then a silhouette uncloaked. "Dr. T'Soni, apologies for the delay. Massani told us you were in danger." The stranger opened her visor. She recognized the face: that was the sloe-eyed Tomoe, one of the Cerberus operatives that had crossed her path twice during her stint on the Compact. The slim Phantom crouched next to her and unpacked her first aid kit. "I'm here to help, ma'am. We can get you to safety."

* * *

_Author's note: _Credit, as usual, goes to my proofreaders, **brokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2001**, for their comments, suggestions and patience. Thank you, guys!


	5. Unexpected twists

Nos Astra — Illium

"What a beautiful piece of work," T'Perro muttered. The parking lot of the Dantius towers construction site was cordoned off. A score of officers and half as many patrol cars crowded the place.

"Whatever happened here, the mechs pulled no punches," Bau noted. Walls, columns, and machines bore the impact marks of gunfire. One of the two trucks parked there was nothing but a burned-out wreck.

The asari Spectre looked behind her shoulder. Six mean-looking police officers surrounded the owner of the building, who alternated between indignant rants and halting explanations as the officers interrogated her.

"I did some looking up," Nihlus told his colleagues. "This Nassana Dantius is not winning any prizes for social responsibility. Short of slavery, she's guilty of breaking every worker reg there is on Illium." _Not that it means much here. _"There's also been a lot of complaints about her security mechs disturbing the surrounding traffic."

"Well, if what I see here is proof, that's not something you're going to fix with a citation," Bau quipped wryly.

Karin Chakwas, Anika Ziegler, and Shilu'Vael approached. "We've been through the police report and double-checked it," the gray-haired doctor said. "Three sets of hematic traces: one belonging to an injured officer, another to a male salarian who worked here, and the last one is a match for Liara."

"Nothing on where could she be?" T'Perro asked.

"Sadly, no." The quarian cyborg shook her head. "The local security grid was wiped thoroughly. Everything works, except that nothing is being recorded."

Agleia, Shilu'Vael's own grafted AI, spoke out then: "If I may be permitted to add, whoever did it left no loose ends. It was a professional-quality piece of hacking work, on the level of an intelligence agency."

"Or Sombra's?" Bau inquired.

"We wouldn't rule it out," Agleia answered. "She leaves no traces either, but I advise not to read too much on this. Liara is relevant to many people."

T'Perro nodded coldly. She was angry. "We're still running catch-up," she grumbled. "Stuff is happening everywhere and we're always late to the scene."

Nihlus did not bother with saying that they had made record time from the _Deliverance_ to Illium. He could not refute her point.

Javik and his batarian henchman Orbak were also there. The commander of the Compact was not talking to anyone, and Orbak rebuffed attempts to approach him; instead, the prothean was examining the scene with his own hands, in the same way his agents had just done. His ability to read more into things than others had revealed some details unknown to the police on the scene but also opened a lot more questions.

He was also angry but in a different fashion. _Bodyguarding lazy civilians is not our job, _he had first thought upon hearing about the attack on T'Soni. But it was not entirely correct and he knew it. T'Soni had been critical to defeating Sovereign, and Saren's murky network of contacts and assets had never been fully mapped out. In his opinion, what had just happened was that a dormant asset of the rogue Spectre had been reactivated and used by someone else.

_By whom?_

"You mentioned a car crash," he heard Nihlus ask a detective. The tag on her chest read 'Anaya'.

"Yes. Some shooters aboard a rented car waylaid officer Dara and T'Soni. Dara said T'Soni fired back with this." Anaya hefted an evidence bag containing an M-11 Suppressor pistol.

Bau stared at the gun. "That's Alliance hardware."

"The first time we see it here," Anaya noted. "We've already analyzed it. It's not digitally signed, so we surmise it's an illegal copy, unusual as it may seem. It fired twenty-one rounds in total today. Two sets of prints, one belonging to T'Soni, another to the turian who attacked her on her flat. We haven't identified the turian yet." She hefted another bag, this one containing a Tempest sub-machine gun. "This is Dara's standard issue gun. Both she and T'Soni fired it." She looked oddly at the Spectres. "I understood she had the most superficial combat training."

"That's correct," Nihlus confirmed. "Why?"

A snort. "Then the Goddess Herself guided her shots today. The driver of the merc car was shot right between the eyes with the pistol. Our forensics expert determined T'Soni fired that round from the rear seat of her rental car at a distance of ninety-six meters. After that, this gun disabled a YMIR mech with two well-placed shots. Two _ridiculously_ well-placed shots. That's the kind of accuracy you get with fire control systems or smart ammunition, or the sort of marksmanship you see in movies. Or if you've gotten genetic boosts — _extremely_ rare and tightly controlled ones, you know, the stuff reserved for elite huntress cadres, or you Spectres, or even one of your adjutants", she pointed out. "But we haven't found a trace of any of that. And I haven't gotten that kind of boost for sure. None of my fellow officers here have them either. At least none that I know of, and I had that checked out just in case."

Javik had overheard the exchange without comment, but now he stepped in. "We require the weapons and samples you have collected for tests." Orbak stepped forward to collect the evidence bags.

Anaya felt a surge of indignation at his brazenness. She glanced briefly at the Spectres, and was extremely surprised by their reaction: instead of pulling rank on her or objecting to the prothean's confiscation, they looked away — Bau and Nihlus in bitter resignation, T'Perro equally indignant but clearly unable to do anything about it. The police officer bowed to the inevitable and surrendered the bags. "As you say."

The prothean nodded perfunctorily. "You have my thanks. Whatever findings that need not be classified will be forwarded to your office."

Along with Chakwas and Shilu'Vael, Anika Ziegler had witnessed the exchange from a few steps away. And it had sent her mind on overdrive. Unbidden, it had strung together a sequence of events, which she was trying to disprove or disbelieve. Unsuccessfully at that.

She could not be the only one to recall that one defining trait of Shepard's had been her mastery of sidearms, a skill honed through hours upon hours on the firing range and further enhanced by the panoply of boosts and upgrades a soldier of her rank and experience mandatorily underwent. Details Anaya had cited almost word by word.

Mei had also told her how, as the first Compact base at Erinyes station came apart under Sovereign's and Reaper's onslaught, she had witnessed Gabriel Reyes handing Shepard a lump of his own substance. Both Shepard and Reyes had been presumed lost then, only to miraculously reappear at the prothean ruins of Ilos. Anika could not be the only one to recall that either.

And something she was certain that had escaped no one was how the meek T'Soni had been Shepard's paramour.

And now T'Soni had displayed Shepard's own skill and relentlessness in battle.

Fact one, fact two, fact three, fact four.

_Ist denn das die Möglichkeit… _

Chakwas noticed how Anika had paled. "Is there something wrong, dear?"

Mercy, the AI molded after Ziegler's late mother, replied in her stead. "Anika just had an idea."

Javik had something else in mind. This was an unexpected interference. His judgment counseled leaving this incident into someone else's hands while he brought forward his plans, but doing that without unmasking the forces behind the attack on T'Soni would further alienate a significant part of the Compact against him — and, far more importantly, it could expose them to further hostile acts he had little chance of anticipating.

He turned, thus, towards Anaya. "We need to inspect T'Soni's living quarters."

* * *

Minuteman station — Horse Head nebula

"Ah, we meet again."

The young asari recognized the spindly shape before seeing her face. "Moira O'Deorain."

"Your memory is as sharp as ever." A smile.

For some reason, Liara found it chilling. "Your team took great pains to get me here. Why?"

"You left behind quite the trail of wreckage in your escape attempt. We did some checking up: that turian in your flat was an experienced gun for hire with a mixed story of contracting out to both the Blue Suns and Eclipse mercenaries. So were those in the car you wrecked by shooting the driver." The mismatched eyes scrutinized her. "I'll quote the detective in charge of the scene: the driver was shot right between the eyes, once. How good a shot are you, doctor?"

"Firearms aren't my—um, my strong suit," she stammered. "Why?" she repeated.

Moira handed her a cup. The contents were warm and smelled slightly bitter. It seemed ages had passed since Liara had last smelled coffee. "I understand you were depressed and you just went through some very stressful moments. I guess that's why you're not making the connection."

The young asari frowned as she sipped the cup. "I don't see it. Why my shooting skills—"

"Our common acquaintance was an expert pistol shot even without any enhancements or boosts. It was seen as quaint by her peers and superiors, but it served you in good stead."

_Me?_ Only then understanding flashed in her mind. She herself had used that Suppressor pistol way better than a rookie could ever have. Her immediate assessment had been that…

_That wasn't me. That was what Shepard would have done… _

_It served me in good stead… _

"Are you implying Shepard did something to me?"

"She most definitely _did _something to you. What I still ignore is the exact nature of it."

Liara glared at her. "You can't have had me brought here just because I might have some enhancement."

"No." Moira's piercing gaze became almost burning in its intensity. "I believe you might be holding the key for a project that's had me stumped for a while."

O'Deorain turned on her heel and walked into the adjoining room. Liara followed, half-expecting to find vats filled with strange liquids and other arcane instruments, but instead, a desktop computer terminal, an empty work table, and some small metal boxes were all there was.

"How did you like the coffee?" Moira asked casually.

"I can't—couldn't say—I mostly drink tea myself…" She put down the empty cup next to the computer terminal. Moira immediately picked it up and held her omni-tool over it. Liara's brow knotted, then anger flashed in her eyes: "You tricked me. You needed my DNA to do something!"

"Hmmm… well, yes, but…" She frowned slightly and tapped a few commands on the desktop terminal.

The young asari was furious. "Look at me when I'm—I'm talking to you here!" she demanded.

"I have a better idea. Look." Moira stepped aside and gestured at the screen.

"I won't." Liara was too soft and mellow to curse properly and she lacked the proper vocabulary, but, if those kinks were ironed out, one of her words of choice for this moment would have had four letters.

"Don't be childish. _Look!_" she insisted, and almost shoved her towards the screen. T'Soni opened her mouth to spout whatever angry invective she could come up with, but then scientific curiosity took the helm, and her sharp gaze assimilated the contents on display there.

"There's something… in my _blood?!_"

Realization struck her an instant after uttering those words.

And then, finally, the cogs started turning. Anxiety and longing almost overwhelmed her.

"And you need it to… to…"

She took a deep breath.

"You want to bring Shepard back."

Moira rolled her eyes. "All that time spent wallowing in depression has really dulled your edge. Yes, I want to bring the good colonel back. I thought I had all the pieces… but it turns out I didn't," she corrected herself. "If these readings are correct… not only did she imbue you with reflexes enough to see you through any danger, but she also left a key part of her on you. With several fail safes and safety locks built-in."

Liara had indeed been dulled by those months spent in mourning, and her heart was racing wildly at the prospect of seeing her paramour again, but right now her thought processes blazed with unreal clarity. "And those safeties can only be overridden by me."

Her human—no, her nanite collective counterpart looked intently into her eyes. She arched her eyebrows next. "How peculiar. I thought you would jump at the chance."

"Don't lie to me. You knew I would hesitate." And Liara's mind was quickly shedding all the rust and grime clogging its cogs.

"And you believe you have good reason to doubt me."

"Nothing you've done so far invites to believe you're trustworthy." The young asari's glare now matched Moira's in coldness and dispassion. "What do you want her for?"

Both scientists stared at each other in silence for a few moments. Then Moira arched an eyebrow. "Name one other individual in this galaxy who commands respect among every major faction."

Liara's face twisted in disbelief. "I'd believe it more if Sombra had that kind of initiative."

O'Deorain let out a spirited laugh. "That's a callous comparison, even if correct." She continued with an amused smirk on her lips: "Javik is about to start an initiative in search of the answers that eluded his kind the last time the Reapers invaded. Cerberus managed to obtain a dossier he provided the Spectres on this matter: five hundred and ninety-one locations suspected to harbor Inusannon ruins.

"Now consider our prothean. He distrusts the Spectres, hates the Alliance for their use of AI, and is neglecting the Compact in favor of handpicking people in person for an armed force that answers solely to him. What do you think he'll do if he finds the answers he's looking for?"

"And Shepard would give that knowledge to you instead?" Liara was not swayed. "She would argue you hardly are a better recipient for that information than he is."

"She would, indeed," Moira allowed with a smug grin, "but she would also work with someone she doesn't quite stomach. She teamed up with Reyes of all people. And on top of that, we have cooperated once already. She'd say it's better to deal with the devil you know."

_Point taken… _the young T'Soni closed her eyes and rubbed her temples and face. Moira's expression fit her conundrum perfectly: it was a deal with the devil that she was being offered.

She struggled mightily to control her feelings. However much she missed Shepard, she was achingly aware of the stakes in play right now.

In her gut, she felt it was equally mad to trust O'Deorain or to refuse her proposal. She would not trust the former Blackwatch researcher with anything more delicate than… than… _Goddess, I can't even think straight!_

"So those are your terms?" she asked as she tried to organize her thoughts. "I can't help but find them inadequate in exchange for performing the feat of resurrecting someone."

Moira's grin grew wider and even smugger. "Information is power, doctor."

Liara was being outmaneuvered and she knew it.

_Shepard would spit on my face if I brought her back as someone's puppet._

That thought brought some clarity to her mind. Her eyes bore into Moira's. "I'd think this was insane if it came out of anyone else's mouth. But both Reyes and Sombra warned Shepard to be wary of you. I'm not a specialist in nanotechnology like Anika, so I don't have a clue of how you are planning to bring back Shepard. And I won't be able to tell if you seize the opportunity to control her somehow."

The smugness vanished from her counterpart's face. They again looked at each other in silence, then intrigue first and disappointment next flickered in Moira's eyes. She sat down in front of the computer terminal, and asked tiredly: "What can I do to prove I'm worthy of your trust in this matter?"

* * *

Omega

The burly krogan bouncer gestured at Garrus Vakarian to come in. The turian then walked past the gate and into the entrance hallway proper to the Afterlife pub. The seedy Chora's Den was a far cry from this place, but also probably nowhere nearly as dangerous as here. Everyone in view was armed, more often than not with pieces that would earn a body prison time if she carried them around openly on the Citadel.

As he walked into the huge amphitheater-shaped hall, a few heads turned to look at him. Some eyes lingered a moment too long on him. He stifled a sigh: he did not want to be recognized. _Oh well_. There was nothing to do about it now.

Other than getting out of sight as quickly as possible, that was. And the person with whom his father had arranged this reunion had been mindful of that: the meeting place was not this immense hall where asari dancers flew around their poles to the delight of patrons, but a discrete table set on a box next to a passageway linking this hall with its twin.

His host was nursing a drink when he arrived and perked up upon noticing him. "I thought you would not come."

Garrus did the turian equivalent of a frown as he recognized him. That was Tiran Kandros, a covert operations specialist that had earned some notoriety as a team leader of Sagirus Eight — the counterterrorism branch of the Hierarchy. "I don't see why. My word has value." After taking his seat across the table, he added: "Whose toes did I step on for you to come looking for me?"

Kandros allowed himself a brief smile. "I was told all the time working with Alliance agents had left its mark on you. They weren't lying."

Garrus could not decide whether the comment was sympathetic or demeaning. He decided to err on the side of caution. "It isn't reasonable to expect any different." He looked into the eyes of his counterpart. "If you're here because my father contacted you, you must know what I'm after."

To his relief, Kandros nodded gravely. "Yes. A lot of people were upset by your departure from the Compact."

Vakarian snorted. "If that didn't jolt them into action, then that serves them just right." He gave Kandros a stony glare. "After the Citadel, I heard a lot of people speaking nice and promising things but little in the way of concrete support. So I'll be blunt here. The Reapers are coming. What can you do to help?"

Again a nod. "I understand your frustration. For the record, Sagirus Eight agrees with your assessment — though we have not succeeded at convincing the decision makers of this. Honestly we hope the latest news will compel them to act: there are signs of troubling activity on the Terminus systems. The epicenter seems to be the Omega 4 relay."

Excerpts from reports read long ago flashed in Vakarian's mind. One of the first things he had done after becoming Nihlus' adjutant in the Spectres had been to use his newly granted clearances to sift through the oceans of data that had been made available to him. Dormant relays were spread across the galaxy, gateways whose destinations they could only guess. Omega 4 was not dormant, though it was equally mysterious —and sinister— for another reason: no ship entering Omega 4 had returned, ever.

_Why didn't I think of this,_ he realized in a moment of bright clarity. Sovereign had been defeated —narrowly— in the battle of the Citadel, but one stridently troubling concern was one other Reaper whose existence they had managed to ascertain — one that had lain dormant buried under the surface of Pokhara, the world contested during the First Contact War, before being released by Sovereign. Or salvaged. They had yet to catch even a glimpse of it.

_The other side of a relay accessible to nobody else is the ideal place for a Reaper to hide._

He temporized. "I heard some disconnected rumors, but nothing concrete."

"Two human colonies have vanished: Ferris Fields and Minamo. Ships are disappearing, or they are being found empty and drifting in space. Piracy and smuggling are down… crews are starting to get reluctant to go on raids. I hear even Aria here is worried." Kandros looked straight at Garrus. "We can't say for sure this is linked to the Reapers, but with so many unexplained things going on just after the battle of the Citadel… if you want help against the Reapers, work with us. Help us make sense of this. Nothing indicates this could spill out of the Terminus worlds and into Citadel space, but we can't ignore the possibility."

Vakarian needed just a moment's thought. Two _whole colonies gone_ — 'vanished' had been the word. _Anderson and his crew must be going mad._

He did not hesitate. "How can I help?"

Kandros reached into his satchel for a tablet computer, tapped a few commands on his omni-tool first and on the computer next, then handed the tablet over to Garrus. "A source of ours got word from a quarian on his pilgrimage. He claimed to have seen a vessel just like Sovereign but in a severe state of disrepair. We're looking for him."

That got an immediate reaction on Garrus' part. "You could have started from there." He scanned the file, only to utter a grunt. "You know, a few years back, I'd have written this quarian off. Wanting to befriend the geth…"

"I thought the same. But then the Shambali led an expedition into the Perseus Veil and came back bearing words of peace, so…"

"Maybe he was not all that wrong." He continued reading as his mind recalled the exchanges he had had with Tekhartha Zenyatta. _This Shio'Leth vas Novarra would have jumped at the chance to have a talk with this robot… and who's not to say he did?_ "And… maybe I can think of something."

* * *

_Author's note: _My thanks to **brokenLifeCycle** for the insights and the comments.


	6. Decretum

Skepsis system — Sigurd's Cradle cluster

The asari pilot and navigator noted their current course, made a slight correction, and informed: "Commander Javik, we are now approaching Keimowitz."

"Good." The prothean looked across the bridge of his brand new ship. Officially, the _Vow of Reprisal_ did not exist. A salarian dalatrass had been among the first to back his initiative to reforge the Compact after the battle of the Citadel, her auspices enabling him to set up a clandestine shipyard in the utmost secrecy where this frigate had been assembled. And secrecy served this ship in good stead, because it was arcane in design, and arguably magical in its capabilities. It boasted unique particle beam-based weaponry, the latest in active and passive stealth, and the most advanced shielding system ever to be installed on a ship: an exquisite triple-layered design that elegantly fused mass effect-based deflectors, hardlight screens and particle barriers into a defense with an answer for literally every contingency.

Each and every one of the crews he had handpicked, interviewed, investigated — and, most importantly, thoroughly probed without their knowledge by means of psychometry. He knew them better than they knew themselves. Some of them had secret allegiances but he had nevertheless selected them, knowing he could use said affairs as tools or cudgels if the need arose.

Orbak, the former batarian External Forces operative, stood next to him. "If you'll excuse me," he asked curtly, "what is it that we hope to find here?"

"We do not know." Javik crossed his arms. "All that survived the Reapers were the logs of some prospective sites. What the Inusannon were doing here is what we come to ascertain."

The frigate circled slowly around the planet. As the sensor suite mapped its surface, icons popped up on the hologram projected in the center of the CIC.

"No settlements, but several robotic mining outposts," was the report of the salarian intelligence officer. "Nobody lives here. Heavy gravity and extreme cold militate against that."

The prothean nodded curtly. "That will play in our favor." The file open in the datapad on his hands was in the incomprehensible prothean cipher, and even if he was sure no one could read a word of that, he had taken extra precautions and further encoded it for the utmost security.

And secure it had to be. There was some truth in the dossiers he had given to the Spectres. Many of the locations detailed there were genuine — if not the most promising ones. Data on the sites likely to yield useful findings he had kept to himself, and it was that data he was reading as he studied the hologram, looking for clues into the place his fellow protheans had found…

Without warning he turned around and walked towards the elevator. "I am going planetside. Nihaya, stay in orbit but out of sight. Do not let anything come within sensor range. Orbak, you are coming with me. Mornela and Tanaka, get suited up and ready to go."

* * *

Nos Astra — Illium

"Yes, I know her," the turian behind the counter nodded. "What's she gotten herself into this time?"

Shilyna T'Perro was laconic. "She's dead."

The turian bartender took a step backwards, clearly stung by the news. He then held a hand to his face. "I told her she would end up like that, but she wouldn't listen."

"We heard she was a regular here. What can you tell me about her?"

They had already ascertained the identity of Liara's attacker: she had been one Paenea Sullus, a spacer hailing from the fringes of Hierarchy territory. Now they were trying to retrace her steps and figure out who had contracted her out for the attempt on T'Soni.

It seemed that she had been dear to the bartender of this seedy pub near Grove Alley —the unofficial neutral ground for mercenaries in Nos Astra—, as the man was visibly grief-stricken. "Paenea… she was lively, that much I can tell you. Got herself kicked out of the Blue Suns after beating a superior to pulp, then did random gigs for Eclipse. Shady stuff. She also tried to break into the Hallex trade, but didn't grow into much of a player… got herself a small list of select clients, though. Word was that she was reliable." He shook his head. "As long as the pay was good, she was up for it. Too much of a risk taker… I guess that finally caught up with her. Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"What happened to her?"

A scowl. "She went after the wrong mark."

The bartender gawked at her. "She took a contract job on someone?" A snort, then he shook his head again. "Never heard of her doing that, but I'm not surprised."

T'Perro nodded absentmindedly, hating this whole mess. Owing to her simultaneous status of Justicar and Spectre, she had agreed to remain on Illium and investigate what had become of T'Soni, who had vanished as if the earth had opened up and swallowed her, while the rest of the Compact inspected Minamo and Ferris Fields in search of clues that could help them figure out what had happened to the colonists.

But it was grunt work. Her training and discipline held her irritation in check, but only so far, and every five to ten minutes she had to remind herself that this was important. But it was not enough to shake off the thoughts that nagged her, hovering at the edge of her conscious mind: much, much bigger things were happening somewhere else while she played detective here.

Especially where Javik was concerned. The prothean had not taken part on the trip to the former human colonies, curtly announcing instead that he had matters to look into before departing.

"Anyone you can think of who could tell me more about her?"

The bartender gestured with his head at the patrons. Many of them observed the exchange discreetly but warily. "You should ask around. She had business with some of the people here, but insofar as I know, it was just that, business."

A grunt. "Thanks for your time."

An hour or so later, she left the bar with a weary and baleful look etched on her face. Her dull red Justicar outfit, with its distinctive tiara and low neckline, communicated loudly and clearly that this asari meant business and that she had all the power and authority she needed to beat the crap out of someone with their own spine if they tried to fuck her over —and right now she was in foul enough a mood to hope someone gave her a reason—, but unfortunately it did not guarantee getting good intel. Sullus indeed had had business dealings with seven of the people there — smuggling mostly, always dangerous goods. All leads to pursue, but rather poor ones at that if her gut, honed by centuries of experience, was correct, unless there was an unexpected—

"Justicar T'Perro."

—twist of fate.

She turned around and saw Tela Vasir.

"You." Shilyna regarded her former colleague angrily, but Vasir's face did not change in the slightest. "What do you want?"

"I'm looking into the same matter that concerns you."

The Spectre clenched her fists. "Stay the hell away from this. I don't need a traitor snooping around."

Vasir ignored that, and started tapping her omni-tool instead. "I got some details you don't have. I can share them with you, but first I was asked to pass on a message to you."

T'Perro did not bother to conceal the hatred in her glare before opening the note the fallen Spectre had sent her.

She read it, frowned, then read it again. Sombra had tapped into part of the Shadow Broker's network and gathered enough facts to ascertain that the mysterious information dealer not only had not been responsible for putting the contract out on T'Soni, but was also investigating the incident.

She wondered why Sombra had bothered to send Vasir in person to communicate this, but immediately reasoned that no precaution was too much when the Shadow Broker was involved.

A reluctant nod. "Fine." She took a look around, wary of any potential eavesdroppers, then she grabbed Vasir by the arm. "Not here."

A minute later they were on one of the busy skylanes of Nos Astra. Neither asari spoke a word. In part it was out of precaution —leaving a vehicle unattended for just a minute was enough for anyone to bug it—, but mostly it boiled down simply to antipathy. The rough T'Perro, alive for almost eleven and a half centuries, knew the vagaries of life as both Justicar and Spectre inside out. Rarely situations were clear-cut, and the five thousand sutras of the Code, while apparently thorough and inflexible to the layman, could not predict everything, and a Justicar was expected to use good judgment to find her way.

Still, as a Spectre, that had translated into being one of the harshest and most unforgiving members ever to be invested. Hence her hatred of Vasir — with her betrayal, she had soiled not just her name, but also her office and her race.

The fallen Spectre, of course, was aware of this all, and took it stoically.

At the main Nos Astra starport, T'Perro parked her hovercar next to an annex closed to the general public. A pair of turian guards, very alert, regarded them thoroughly, but did not stop them as they walked into the building. Once inside, the Justicar led her into a small office that clearly was an interrogation room of some kind, and secured the door behind her.

"This is as secure as it's going to get in this city. Now spit it."

Vasir acquiesced. So far, everything had unfolded as Sombra had told her it would. "The Shadow Broker had an agent inside T'Soni's flat."

T'Perro's eyes narrowed. "The receptionist."

"Her name is Nyxeris. It was she who let Sullus in. Then she walked out, hopped into her car, drove herself to the nearest transit station and took a ship off planet."

Again a nod, but a troubled one now. "That she was an agent for the Broker is news." Then she frowned. "Why's that bastard 'investigating' this then? It was his goon that set this up."

Vasir leaned against a wall, her eyes not veering off Shilyna's. "My handler didn't say," she admitted, "but maybe it's because someone used Nyxeris pretending to be him. Consider it an 'educated guess.'"

A groan. "So he can't keep tabs on his assets. Some information broker." T'Perro then dwelt on this for a few moments, thinking. _That bitch is in for a nasty surprise when she reports to the Broker and finds out she's been had._

Vasir read her thoughts. "If I'm allowed another educated guess—" that got her an annoyed glare from T'Perro but little else "—probably the Broker is looking into this because Nyxeris has already reported in."

"Probably." The Spectre kept her icy glare on Vasir. "So, unless you have clues on this bitch's whereabouts… or any ideas on who manipulated her…"

"A loose end." A few further tappings on Vasir's omni-tool sent T'Perro another message, this time with an enclosed file. She opened it, scanned it—

_Rana Thanoptis…_

"Goddess." The ancient Spectre let out a long, angry sigh. "A loose end indeed… But why? And how did she suborn an agent of the Broker? Last time I read about her she was an egghead that had spent her life in a lab." Her glare grew even colder. "And why the generosity? Your 'handler' doesn't do freebies."

Vasir sat on one of the cheap chairs. "No, she doesn't. She thinks I'm going to need muscle and she knows you're looking into this too."

_Business._ A dry nod. That was something she could manage better than following breadcrumbs.

_But, Vasir, needing muscle?_ Shilyna frowned. "What's it that you're going to need help with? You're no pushover."

* * *

Blackburn-Lawson residence — Anhur

"Hello, Oriana," her guardian welcomed her home as she opened the door. "I recall you were going to have the work you've done so far on your thesis reviewed today. How did it go?"

Inwardly, the tall brunette rolled her eyes. _Here we go again._

"Professor Welz pointed out a few things that need improvement. He said it's a normal milestone to encounter those issues and they're a sign of good progress."

"That's not good." Selina Blackburn stared at Oriana. "Settling for anything less than perfect results is a waste of your potential."

Oriana returned the stare with her own irate glare. "He didn't say there was something wrong. And I don't deserve that comment for just a small suggestion. I've been getting perfect results on all my tests and assessments for years."

"And that's what's expected from you. You have the talents and the smarts it takes."

A tiny bit of frustration escaped Oriana's tight self-control. "It's easy to say it."

Selina was unmoved. "I understand you feel you have it hard. But think of all the people that don't have the advantages you got. Your job is to graduate with the best score. Mine is to see that you have everything that can help you with that. That's why I manage your car, your security detail, your wardrobe."

"And as I'm privileged I should be grateful and strive to make the best out of it."

"Yes, you should." Her guardian ignored the sarcasm. A spark of warmth lit her violet eyes. "A day will come when you will look back and ponder what could have happened if you had gone astray."

Oriana Lawson was not swayed. "A day could also come when you do the same and wonder where did _you_ go astray." With resounding steps she walked into the house and towards the stairs, denying Selina the chance to issue a rebuttal. She was tired — not because of the demands her intense routine placed on her. It was the constant oversight on her tutor's part.

* * *

Another Lawson sat alone in the darkened living room of the flat she had selected as her vantage point, observing how the scene unfolded from two hundred meters away. All lights were turned off and the window blinds fully open, making her impossible to spot from the outside. Her acute eyes followed both women intently on her binoculars until the front door closed.

_It was the same with me,_ Miranda thought quietly. There had been a few differences, of course. Instead of a woman, her own guardian had been a man, as thoroughly professional and distant as his other duties as head of her security detail had demanded. Instead of a house, she had had a whole floor to herself, if one in a similarly upscale neighborhood.

But the trappings of an invisible gilded cage had been apparent to her all the same. Oriana rated her own security detail as well, and the operatives were smart, alert and observant — but however skilled their efforts at blending with their surroundings, they could not fool her. Not even those boasting active camouflage. That rendered them near-invisible to the human eye, but not to _her_ eyes.

She did not need to consciously make a count and so get distracted from her meticulous observation. Back in the day, Miranda's own detail had consisted of twenty-five agents, about half of which she had known personally, and the remainder she had eventually learned to tell apart from other people — passersby, cops, teachers, fellow students even. Chafing from the stringent environment in which she was growing up, as a teenager she had begun fantasizing with escaping from them all, and as she matured those vague what-ifs had blossomed into a full-fledged plan, parts of which she had carefully and successfully put to test —always causing her minders to frantically look around for her—, but she had never set the whole plan in motion.

Now she would. It would require a few adjustments to accommodate for the place and the target. Of course, a point of contention was whether her sister would be cooperative — but what she had overheard sounded promising. Quite likely, given her body language and voice tone, Oriana had also entertained the same kind of speculations Miranda had once dabbled into.

Her sister's own busy schedule was the real problem. She did not have any more lectures to attend at the New Thebes University, but still she spent a lot of time there working on her thesis on environmental engineering. Then there were many extracurricular activities, ranging from the public to the very private. Oriana, like Miranda herself, had been bred as a vehicle for the realization of their father's wishes, and she had to be absolutely perfect at _everything_ — whether she was a cultural ambassador to Citadel citizens considering to move into Alliance space, an advanced practitioner of the Akban and Systema combat styles, a very, very secret biotics student under an asari master or an incipient supermodel, she had to be second to none.

The door to her flat opened. The soft footsteps told her who it was without her having to turn around.

There was no announcement on part of the newcomer either, just a tablet computer that suddenly appeared out of nowhere on top of the night stand by the window. Miranda took it and started scanning it. "Give me the specifics."

Her visitor uncloaked. It was a drell, somberly dressed in dark tones. "The security detail is thorough," he began. "The commander in charge is very expert." His voice took on a mechanical cadence. "Two guards openly in view. Half a dozen agents posing as fellow students: four male, two female. Two more as instructors, professors D'Amico and Welz. A dozen more distributed on the metro station underneath college grounds, disguised as shopkeepers, operators or policemen. Three sharpshooter teams detailed on the roofs of nearby buildings, overlapping lines of sight and fields of fire. Surveillance drones in support, sweeping through college grounds three times a day at random."

Lawson acknowledged him with a nod. So far, this Thane Krios was living up to his reputation. Sombra's advice on the matter had been sound indeed.

The drell looked out the window. "I could assist if I had the details of what you're planning."

"Other than that I intend to extract her, there is no plan yet," Miranda replied as she read his report in detail. He was good. He had identified more blind spots in the security arrayed around Oriana, all the while evading detection himself.

Thane had already surmised this. He did not waste his breath pointing out that quick exfiltration was not a possibility here. He suggested instead: "If your target is cooperative, I would plan for a getaway through the subway station."

"I've considered it myself." It was a given that the opposition would be watching the metro station closely. Keeping track of someone there, given the amount of traffic passing through it, would be no easy task.

But the most thorough plan could be totally derailed if she had misread her sister and she turned out not to be cooperative.

_I have to find out first…_

The drell read her thoughts. "You're considering to contact the subject."

Krios' tone was the detached and clinical one she had come to expect from him, except for an almost imperceptible shade of disapproval anyone else would have missed. "I don't like it either, but I must know if she will agree to the extraction."

"Then send me in to do it. Your face is known to your opponents."

_But how will she react if a drell comes out of the blue and speaks to her?_ Unlike the Council races, the drell were relatively obscure. They were few in number, and had no worlds or colonies to call their own. Such an episode would trigger both caution and curiosity in Miranda were it to happen to her, but using her own experiences to measure the likely responses of her sister's was a bad call in any case.

And it went without saying that if anyone saw her face in Anhur, Oriana would vanish.

"We'll do it your way," she agreed reluctantly at last. "I'll run mission control."

Krios nodded his acquiescence. "When?"

Miranda did not answer immediately. Over the last ten days they had built a painstakingly detailed schedule of the activities of everyone involved — Oriana, her guardian, the security detail around them.

And other notable people in her sister's life.

Unlike her elder sister, Oriana had a few choice friends.

The late Shepard's words returned to question her resolve. The colonel had piercingly asked what would happen if she had just a normal life and she was just a normal girl. While it had turned out not to be entirely spot on, it was not entirely off the mark either. Oriana had affections, relations. Those would weigh on her sister's conscience at the time of choosing whether to go or to stay, if it came to that.

Plus, it implied renouncing her ties to Cerberus. Following the battle for the Citadel she had used those to disappear, but returning to the fold had not been easy. She had seen things during her stint on Starwatch that had given new strength to an increasingly assertive conscience.

Going ahead with her plans now would not be a declaration of war, but close enough.

She breathed in and out deeply without putting down the binoculars. It had almost been a year since she had discovered the secrets behind her own creation. She had then committed herself then to the cause of setting any siblings she could have free — and of exacting revenge on her father by tearing apart his egomaniacal eugenics program.

Cerberus was _not_ going to stop her from realizing her plans.

"Tomorrow."

* * *

Freeport 74

Lacroix opened the message that had just arrived on her desktop terminal. It was short, concise and to the point.

She read it slowly, word by word, trying to divine the intent behind the sender.

Then she stood up and walked into the living room of their flat. There, Tracer knelt on a yoga mat, nude as she usually was. She had just finished her exercise routine and perspiration covered her, her breathing agitated. Her eyes followed the three golden spheres that Zenyatta had sent her via Shimada Hiroshi, son to Hanzo and nephew to her late friend and fellow legend Genji.

"Liara T'Soni has been abducted," Amélie said without preamble.

Lena did not answer at first. Since Hiroshi had visited them, she had dedicated many hours to meditation and thought, an intense physical training regime helping her yank her mind out of the abyss of despondency where she had wallowed after the battle of the Citadel, and putting it in a more disciplined state that had allowed the healing to finally begin.

Hours upon hours she had dwelt upon Zenyatta's words, back in the day of her last enjoyable social visit before Sovereign's attack upon Elysium.

_Do not be so strong, Lena._

Then there had been the harsh admonishment on part of the late Shepard.

_You want to keep your soul? Open it up to others. Let us help you shoulder your pain. The moment you start pushing people away, you'll have lost._

That Shepard had sacrificed her life to defeat Sovereign and Reaper had brightly burned at first, but then it had become something worse.

Except for surrendering herself to Amélie's care, she had done exactly what Shepard had warned her not to do.

It could hardly be called a dalliance, much less a relationship. It could not even be said that something had 'blossomed' between her and her erstwhile nemesis. Amélie had been butchered into a caricature of a person, and having to tend to someone as broken as her —albeit in a different way— had allowed a real person to start growing again in her.

She did not even regard her as Widowmaker anymore. That sinister moniker was not yet a thing of the past — Lacroix had learned to deal with that trauma by purposefully cultivating what psychologists had once described as dissociative identity disorder. Widowmaker was the assassin, the ruthlessly precise sniper to whom anything on the other side of a scope was either a target or not a target. Amélie Lacroix was the human, the girl, the ballet dancer, the grieving widow, the lover.

As the human had fought the murderess tooth and nail for Amélie's soul, Lena had seen how Lacroix grew a reserve of moral courage. And she had been humbled by it.

Pain was to Amélie a reminder of her humanity, a welcome sign of still having a soul. She was not afraid of it.

Lena was.

She feared what would happen if Lacroix, too, vanished.

It was a very difficult balancing act, what she had to do. Open up too much, and she risked turning people into emotional crutches. Open up too little, and what was left of herself would be lost to despondency and emptiness.

Which could end up being her fate anyway if her crutches met untimely ends.

There was no logical way around it.

Then, she had eventually discovered, she had to appeal to other tools.

She had to trust things would turn out well, even if she did not see how.

She had to have faith.

To the beyond cynic she had become, that was an almost insurmountable undertaking.

_What is faith?_ Zenyatta had once asked her rhetorically.

_It is not, as many claim, belief in deities. Or mythical figures. Or prophets. Or gurus._

_To have faith, Lena, you have to surrender yourself to the forces beyond your grasp._

_You must accept that there are things you cannot control._

_You must stop worrying about the 'how'. 'How' will 'it' happen. 'How' can 'I' help make 'it' happen. That must become irrelevant to you._

_You have to trust the Universe will see about the 'how' and take care of the 'it' on its own._

_That is what faith is. No more. No less._

For a while now those thoughts had danced on her mind.

Maybe it was now time for the dance to continue without her to watch over it.

"Illium?"

Amélie spotted a spark in Tracer's eyes. She nodded.

Slowly Lena stood up. She did not feel any weights tumbling off her shoulders. Not yet.

Maybe that would come when she was not looking.

"We should look into it."

* * *

_Author's note:_ as usual, my proofreaders, **brokenLifeCycle** and **kyro2001** deserve kudos for putting up with me. Thanks a lot, guys!


	7. Contacts

New Thebes — Anhur

Oriana swung her fist at her asari opponent's lower chest. Her protruding thumb struck her target between her ribs. Had it been a real fight, she would have punched much harder —and so maybe caused a life-threatening injury—, but Monestria gasped nonetheless and held up an open hand before exploding in a coughing fit.

Lawson at once was concerned, fearing she had gone too far and applied too much force. "Mistress? Are you okay?"

The veteran Monestria nodded weakly before coughing again. She was rubbing a sore spot right below her left breast. "I'm—I'm fine… that was a fine blow."

"Actually…" Oriana fidgeted about uncomfortably. "I decided to try something new."

Her biotics teacher frowned. "That was the fourth of the Akban Five Elements. Much stronger than usual, but otherwise…"

"Well, yes, mistress, but, um… I've been, uh, practicing on a new idea."

Monestria arched an eyebrow. "Explain."

"I've, uh, been trying to… to enhance my attacks with focused biotic strength. That way I thought I could… well, I thought I could hit vital points harder."

The asari instructor blinked in surprise. That was extremely fine biotics control. "And you attempted that just now."

"Well, yes and no, mistress. If I had put all my weight behind it…"

Again a nod. "You've learned to compensate," she noted with a hint of sincere admiration in her voice.

Oriana bowed her understanding. Monestria had flatly told her that, while she had the potential to be a strong biotic, there were levels of power and mastery that she would never attain — if anything, because of her shorter lifespan.

But now, her asari instructor was thinking, this human apprentice had attempted a highly difficult feat, one that not everyone could master, and she had succeeded. Maybe she would never be a matriarch's equal in raw power, but in skill… "You're doing well," Monestria further commended her. "If you perfect this technique you will be a supremely dangerous hand-to-hand fighter."

"What should I do better, mistress?"

"To be honest, I don't know," she admitted. "I myself can't do what you just did, not with the same degree of control. You still have much to learn about biotics, but on this particular topic, I have nothing to teach you. Maybe it's time you started looking for another instructor."

Oriana was troubled by that. "But you've been great, mistress." She smiled at her. "A good teacher doesn't fear admitting they don't know something."

"To be fair, I said it was time to look for another teacher, not for a substitute," Monestria pointed out with a small grin, warmed by the compliment. "But I appreciate your words nonetheless."

* * *

Monestria's words were still echoing in Oriana's head as she got off her hovercar. She waved once at the driver and the guard on the front seat, and with long strides she walked into the campus of the New Thebes University.

As always, heads would turn to see her come and go, but no one approached her. It was a rare day when someone did. On top of being a successful student, Oriana was already a known name in the Anhur modeling scene, and the reasons were in plain view for the world to see — there always was a lot of spirit and vigor to her steps, her athletic and curvaceous frame moving with a unique combination of aplomb and grace.

And one of the consequences of that was that she had been stricken with something best described as attractiveness-induced isolation. Having an overzealous security detail arrayed 24-7 around her only helped scare even more people away — and her superhuman perception, a fact less well known to others, meant that it was next to impossible for a normal person to conceal their motivations when approaching her. Few men did, almost all of those being obnoxious and shameless players only interested in getting in her pants, no few women also approaching her with the same ideas. Which disgusted her.

The other kind of man that tried to talk to her was almost always quaking with fear and anxiety, guys lacking in confidence and desperate for a chance to get closer to her — with the same intent as the player. Those she hated even more.

The exceptions to this depressing routine were now entering view. "Good morning, Ettore."

"Hey, Oriana." Ettore Falcone was as Italian in ancestry as his name hinted — but he was anything like the typical Italian male: tall, gaunt and very slim. His brown bespectacled eyes —an anachronism in times of near-miraculous medicine—, now focused on the tablet computer on his hands, concealed a ferociously sharp mind driven by an equally determined spirit.

Lawson grinned. "I wonder if I'll ever arrive to see you doing something other than reading or writing."

"You wouldn't like him if he did." Mariana Abramowsky was her one close friend anywhere. A brunette like Oriana, but shorter and skinnier than her, she had known Lawson ever since the latter's arrival in Anhur almost ten years back. As time passed and Oriana's schedule had become increasingly busy, the time they could share had consequently diminished, and only grown ever more precious.

Oriana rolled her eyes. "You got a fixation with that idea."

Mariana smirked. "Oh, really? That blush tells me something else."

"Lay off, would you please?" She sat next to her friends, annoyed at having been thrown off balance, and let off a long-drawn, eyes-closed sigh.

The smile vanished off Abramowsky's face. "That's not like you. What's going on?"

"I'm a bit stressed," Lawson breathed. Monestria's words heralded yet another change in her complicated routine. Another person that would walk into her life and eat into her already severely depleted reserves of free time.

"If you shared something else maybe we could help you out," Ettore said in a slow voice, his eyes still focused on the contents of his tablet.

Oriana shook her head once. "I'm sorry, guys. Unless you can somehow make my day six hours longer, It's not something you can help me with." She eyed Falcone, her annoyance slightly intensifying over his obstinate focus on his studies, then leaned over to look at his tablet. "You're going again over those things professor Sanabria said yesterday?"

Only now Falcone lifted his eyes off the tablet. He had but the briefest moment to admire Oriana's cleavage, now very close to his face, before looking into her eyes and answering in stride: "Well… I just don't get it. I've looked all over this. I'm certain about one thing — it's not my figures that are wrong. I've made a mistake somewhere else in my analysis but I don't see where. Yet."

His passing ogle was just the right spark to set off a stressed woman, but oddly enough, it had the opposite effect on Oriana, and the weirdness of that actually stopped her train of thought cold.

_Well, it's not like I gave him much of a choice, did I…_ Lawson was not one to actively flaunt her assets, but neither was she demure. Her tight black skirt and the neckline on her white blouse left little to the imagination.

"You will. It's going to be a rare day when you give up before finding an answer." And that was another thing she liked about him.

Mariana looked at them with an amused smile. "Have you considered that he's just the thing you need now?"

* * *

Another Lawson watched the scene unfold, only from an apartment half a kilometer away. There was a slight frown etched on Miranda's forehead. She had had mixed reactions the first time she had seen her sister socializing with her friend and her crush, and she was having mixed feelings again now.

She took a sip of water from a bottle and watched Oriana and her crew exchange jokes and comments before continuing her surveillance, if only to distract that nagging voice that told her this was going to be harder than she had expected. Not because of the security measures; tapping into the public security systems —avoiding both the government firewalls and the alarm software covertly installed by Oriana's security detail to detect such maneuvers— had allowed her to get positive locks on all the members of her detail, including the ones cloaked.

No, it was going to be her sister herself that complicated things. What if she refused to go because of Ettore and Mariana? It was plain as day that Oriana greatly liked the gaunt youth. Yesterday, as in every day where she had not seen her meeting with her friends, she had been inclined to think that the pressures of her highly controlled life would cause her to lash out; but today, as in every day when Oriana met Ettore and Mariana, her judgment told her otherwise.

That infuriating voice now was accusing her of falling anyway into the trap of measuring her sister with the same standards applied to her. Someone with no friends or paramours could hardly judge the importance of those things in the same way as someone who had those.

_Whatever._ Today all the speculation would come to a head. Thane Krios was proceeding with his infiltration of the campus and he would signal her—

"Checkpoint Romeo." —any time now.

"Roger." They had used the data built after weeks of surveillance to develop a series of routes to approach their target, each one with its particular set of checkpoints. Romeo was at the roof of the campus, the start of Route Five. She did not know how Thane would get there, but the drell had insisted on leaving the particulars to him. He had delivered.

* * *

The Citadel

The last time Garrus had been on the Citadel still burned brightly in his memory. His mind relived the scenes as he walked out of the customs checkpoint and entered the chaotic walkways leading to Silversun Strip, going through all the motions out of a habit grown from over a hundred visits while nostalgia and melancholia gripped him.

He had never seen the Citadel like on that day. Hierarch Paratus' last proposal before renouncing to his councillorship had been to honor the sacrifice of Shepard and Reyes, and as a result, every street and walkway on which the funeral procession had taken place had been alternatively decorated in black or white, owing to the two most commonly held customs among the many human ethnic groups.

The enormity of Shepard's figure once again now presented itself before him, as it had done that day, and once again had he found himself wishing he had known the feisty Aaliyah better, wishing he had been more than a reliable operative that competed with others like him for her attention and time.

The tiny woman had _been_ the Compact. Sheer force of personality and an absolute commitment to her mission had made it work. Before her, humans had been the most reviled species in the galaxy after the batarians and the quarians. But she had gone the distance, and brought together two enemies before Saren's machinations had borne fruit and war had broken out between the Alliance and the Citadel.

And now, her legacy was in view. Ahead of him had disembarked a group of omnics. This still elicited curious glances and more than one fearful look, but nothing else. The whole galaxy knew that their support had helped contain Sovereign's onslaught and had prevented his assault from becoming a bloodbath with a body count in the millions.

In fact, the omnics themselves were the reason for his visit. At the Silversun Strip transit station, he called a cab that took him to the Wards, and then another to the Presidium. Once there he walked to the diplomatic district.

He could recall at will how it had been. The terrible and eternal minutes aboard their dropship, the desperate fighting at the gates of the Alliance embassy, the dread of traversing the corridors to the Rotunda…

…the relief after the defeat of Saren and Sovereign…

…and the grief that had come with the realization of the cost of their victory.

The monument in front of him only intensified that. Twin statues of Shepard and Reyes stood side to side. Aaliyah's likeness had been sculpted with an arm outstretched as if she was readying a biotic attack, whereas Gabriel's brandished a Locust submachine gun.

The assassin's sacrifice had earned him in death the redemption he had sought in life, but the homage was no consolation for Garrus. It only made the void inside of him deeper.

A familiar voice brought him out of his reverie: "Vakarian?"

Garrus turned around and blinked twice: "Executor Pallin?"

His former superior smiled and nodded. He was dressed and loaded for bear, like a dozen other turian troopers manning the main security checkpoint to the embassies. "I thought it was you. You look different from your C-Sec days."

That elicited the turian equivalent of a frown. "How so?"

"You were so naive and eager back then."

The frown changed into an annoyed scowl. He again looked at the statues. "Years and experience beat that out of you. As you know."

Pallin bowed his head in agreement. "Your exploits in the Compact are famous here. The guys here were proud of you. Still are," he emphasized. The guards overheard the comment and respectfully bowed their heads in agreement. "I'd like to know why you left, but I suppose you're here for your meeting."

Another surprised blink. "I'm not. I was actually coming to request an audience…"

"With whom?"

"Zenyatta, the Shambali leader. I understand he's visiting."

Another grin. "The Shambali are already expecting you. Come in," he said, gesturing at his men to let him through. "And after you're done, come over for a chat. We'll be waiting."

It was impossible to refuse him. "I will. Thanks."

He walked into the cul-de-sac that served as the main square for the embassies of those nations without a Council seat. The Alliance delegation was by far the largest there, owing to their significantly boosted political power. The Shambali, while members of the Alliance themselves, had their own separate compound, and it was always the object of curiosity for newcomers — after centuries of preaching against sentient AIs, finally one kind had earned some degree of acceptance there.

Omnics were diverse. The first models Garrus had seen at Pokhara had been almost comical in appearance, not too different from the manikins used by clothing stores to advertise their wares; Tekhartha Zenyatta himself, one of their most relevant figures and de facto leader of the Shambali, still looked like that. But modern omnics came in a dizzying gamut of shapes and sizes, some featuring faces as capable of expression as that of a human, some not even having an anthropoid shape. Most of the personnel and diplomats attached to the Shambali compound, however, roughly resembled Zenyatta.

It was one of these manikin-looking synthetics that first recognized him and walked towards him. It looked slightly feminine in shape, more curvaceous and slender than a human male would be. "Garrus Vakarian," the android greeted him warmly with a womanly voice. "You are being expected. Would you kindly follow after me?"

The turian veteran nodded his thanks. "Lead the way." He then gave this omnic a closer look. "Have we met before?"

"Probably you've seen me somewhere. My name is Ororo."

Garrus had to shake his head. "Sorry. My bad."

"No harm done. Actually, our paths have crossed, after a fashion. I was aboard the cruiser _London_ back on the First Contact War."

Vakarian recognized the name: "That was Shepard's ship."

"She was a junior officer back then. I was under the command of a colleague of hers, lieutenant Minovsky."

A disagreeable feeling of guilt invaded him. Lieutenant Minovsky had been killed by turian boarders during a desperate battle on the mess hall of the ship. "That wasn't our brightest moment."

"It's in the past," Ororo replied serenely. "Besides, if I may add, the lessons learned were worth the price."

Garrus wanted to believe that, but he was not so sure. The fact that he was there not as the Compact agent he had been, but on his own instead, told him otherwise.

Ororo stopped in front of a simple, unmarked door, one of several in a corridor, where she took her leave. Garrus knocked discreetly and the door slid sideways. He had half-expected to see a room adorned in the fashion of a temple or something like that, but the sole notes of color on an otherwise ordinary chamber were a golden statuette of a human monk kneeling and gesturing with his hands —that was a… an image of Buddha, if he recalled correctly—, some handcrafted pillows, and a very old-looking hand woven carpet.

"Peace be upon you, Garrus Vakarian." Zenyatta regarded him warmly. "Please, be seated."

The turian veteran looked at the omnic monk. He was the exact same Zenyatta he had first seen on a screen prior to meeting him live on the old, clandestine asteroid base of Erinyes the Compact had operated before earning the recognition of the Council — down to the same simple brown pants and sandals, and the same nine metal spheres that orbited around him. He hovered some fifteen centimeters over the carpet, his legs folded in a kneeling position, not unlike that of the golden statuette.

Upon first meeting Zenyatta, Garrus' initial impression had only reinforced his negative stereotypes of omnics — only for those impressions and stereotypes to be proved abysmally wrong shortly afterward. Everyone had held their breaths upon his first encounter with the quarian members of the Compact, waiting to see how they would react to him, and the outcome had been nothing short of awe-inspiring. Zenyatta's wise use of parables and words had won him the respect of the now-cyborg Shilu'Vael, her mother Jaenna'Gisal, and Tali'Zorah nar Rayya.

"Thanks for receiving me," he replied almost reverentially. He reached for some pillows, then sat opposite him on the carpet. "How did you know I was coming?"

"Your name is legend," was the benign answer. "And given how recent events have unfolded, I surmised you had come to the Citadel to talk to me."

"Then you know why I'm here."

"I do. You come to me in search of insights on Shio'Leth vas Novarra." Garrus was at once apprehensive, but Zenyatta reassured him: "Fear not. Our mission here is secure. My fellow Shambali have endeavored to make it so."

Vakarian had no choice but to accept that. "You have knowledge of this?"

"The quarian sought us. He sent his last missive to us from Ferris Fields, a few days before the colonists vanished."

_Fantastic luck._ "So he's gone."

"I have motives to believe he is not. He wanted to converse with me, as do you. He claimed to have found an artifact in geth territory. When he learned of our visit to the Perseus Veil, he wanted me to request the geth granted him safe passage."

Questions blazed in his mind at once. _A geth artifact? A quarian wanting to ask the geth to let him go there—where is 'there'? What kind of artifact—?_ He backpedaled mentally and organized his thoughts: "What kind of artifact did he find?"

"That, regrettably, I know not. Shio'Leth spoke in meandrous ways. He let on that a hostile party was hounding his steps."

Garrus curbed his unease. "I should tell you my side of the story. A Sagirus Eight operative told me this quarian saw a ship that looked like a badly damaged Reaper."

Zenyatta bowed his head. The metal spheres orbiting him spun quickly around him twice before he spoke. "The elusive Reaper from our old colony at Pokhara."

"I believe as much," Garrus concurred. "This operative told me of other incidents. Ships disappearing, or found adrift in space, their crews gone. And everything is happening around the Omega 4 relay."

The omnic sage still did not raise his head. "I can only hope no calamity has befallen our quarian acquaintance."

_I agree,_ Vakarian thought gruffly, _and to think I just arrived from there. If I had gotten out a message instead of coming all the way here…_ "If only we had learned sooner about what each other knows."

Zenyatta raised his eyes to gaze contemplatively at the spheres circling around his head. "Many distinct threads of fate are now being woven across the stars. We are but actors in only one. There is much happening beyond what our eyes can see, and many eyes are watching… Whatever it is that Shio'Leth has found, I believe it is in everyone's best interest that it remains known to few."

That did not suffice to put Garrus to ease. "Normally I believe in need-to-know," he replied, his cool words belying his restlessness, "but this is an occasion when my gut tells me that if we don't move fast, we won't get a chance later on."

The omnic sage bowed his agreement. "You speak truly." He raised an open palm, and glyphs glowed briefly on one of the spheres. At once Vakarian's omni-tool dinged. "Please read."

Zenyatta had just forwarded him the extent of his correspondence with Shio'Leth. To call the quarian starry-eyed would probably not do him justice, at least by the tone of his first few messages. Oddly enough, he mentioned nothing to Zenyatta about a damaged Reaper; he gushed about something he had but merely glimpsed and he needed his help to corroborate, all the time waxing about how it could help bring peace between quarians and geth, as it had done between the Citadel and the Alliance.

Then his tone had abruptly changed. Something had scared him out of his wits. He should never have gone 'there', he should never have seen 'that', now 'they' knew and were onto him, dogging his steps… always ghost contacts on his ladar, his sensors occasionally weirding out or going haywire, strange things happening near whatever port he approached…

His correspondence had ceased a week hence.

"I hope whatever was shadowing him didn't get to him."

"So do I," the omnic concurred. "I have people looking into this on my behalf as we speak. You will probably want to join forces with them."

"Yes," Garrus said on the spot. "Where should I go?"

Again Zenyatta raised a hand and glowing glyphs appeared on his spheres. "You will come across them on the Sigurd's Cluster relays. They will approach you."

* * *

Omega Nebula

Zaeed Massani arched his burn-scarred eyebrows. "Let me get this straight. You want to infiltrate the Logasiri slaver rings? You, of all people?"

Neither Tela Vasir nor Shilyna T'Perro were impressed. "Sombra said you know the right people."

Sombra, of course, knew a lot more than just that. Rana Thanoptis was proving elusive, but nonetheless the hacker had provided T'Perro and Vasir with summaries of her correspondence. Heavily redacted summaries, but useful still: Thanoptis had gotten involved into the slave trade and was arranging the delivery of shipments to an unknown party via the infamous batarian slaver rings of Logasiri. That was abhorrent in and of itself, but the truly disturbing fact was that the shipments had consisted entirely of humans — not their synthetic flunkies, no other sapient race. Just humans.

And the first shipments had been delivered shortly before the beginning of the incidents around the Omega 4 relay — before Ferris Fields and Minamo.

The weathered mercenary knew better than to ask two of the most lethally dangerous people in the galaxy whether they were right in their heads. "You're damn right I know the right people," he replied roughly instead, "but I think you don't know what you're asking of me."

"Oh, I do," was T'Perro's equally sharp retort. "We want you to burn your bridges and ruin your rep with the underworld, so we can sniff the insides of a community we would rather burn to the ground." _And we will, eventually,_ she thought but did not say. _We have bigger fish to fry now._

Massani's eyes narrowed. "Thanks for putting it so clearly, blueskin," he sneered. "Now, how are you going to pay me?"

"You'd be doing us a favor. Everyone needs friends, and allies. You know who I'm working for, right?" Vasir asked rhetorically.

"You'd be owing me _big fucking time._ Maybe your boss can offer something worth this kind of 'favor', but getting her to pay up… And there's the small matter of working for a snake that backstabbed both the Council and the Shadow Broker. And you?" he glared at T'Perro, then snorted. "I don't think you can get the Council to meet my price."

Shilyna had to take that at face value. It was accurate, if uncouth. She was not going to get him to do what she wanted if she did not play hardball too. "Tell you what. You want the Blue Suns back, don't you?"

An evil grin. "I want Vido's head on a silver fucking platter. And I'll get it."

"Without help from the cops, you mean."

"I can't have my crew back if they think I went snitch on them, dontcha think?"

"Without direct help, that is," Vasir further clarified T'Perro's comment. "Just killing Vido won't get you 'your crew' back. You'll also have to remove those who enabled his coup. That's a tall order, even for you," she noted, her nonchalant tone turning a spot-on observation into an elegant insult. "That's the help we can offer. We help you rebuild strength within your old organization and set up the stage so that when the time comes you can remove them all at once."

* * *

That conversation had taken place three days hence. Now T'Perro and Vasir were being led straight into the lion's den by a contact Zaeed had set up for them — one 'Fabius Varro', a turian that occasionally had done business with these particular slavers.

"Are you out of your minds?!" 'Varro' had bellowed. "When they find out what you're doing there — you know what Silparon did?!"

"We'll manage it," T'Perro had replied dismissively. "They won't dare to make a living legend disappear."

The turian had twisted his face in disbelief. "You really are out of your minds. You don't know what those people are capable of."

The ancient Spectre had smirked dangerously. "Oh well. If I'm wrong, it will be a perfect opportunity to do some house cleaning."

Soon they would see whether their gambit paid off. In a few moments Varro's ship would dock on one of the space stations orbiting Logasiri. A Stingray corvette had escorted them on their final approach and was now keeping a watchful eye on their freighter from the port side.

Their ship settled on the landing pad with a series of hisses and creaks. Varro sighed, then looked stonily at his guests. "Alright, we're here. You're my bodyguards here, you understand? Let me do the asking." Both asari accepted that with nods.

The cargo bay doors were already open when they walked down the boarding ramp. A batarian loadmaster was supervising the unloading of the cargo pallets with a profusion of curses and swears at the dock workers.

"Got yourself better guards this time, Varro?" the batarian asked roughly in the way of greeting. "There's a change to your storage fee. 1,200 credits."

"What?" the turian glared angrily at the loadmaster. "Why?"

A vague gesture at the pallets. "You have a lot of food here. There won't be any new mouths to feed for the next week at least. You don't want all of that tossed out into space until you can sell it, right?"

"But the shipments due tomorrow and—"

"They won't be coming. Tarak's and Vorhess' ships were found adrift and empty. Ghorek is throwing a fit about it right now." A shrug. "You can pay or not?"

T'Perro and Vasir kept their faces inexpressive as the hired muscle they were supposed to be, and so did not glance at each other. But the same thought went through their heads: _more kidnapped crews._

In the meantime, Varro resigned himself. He took the datapad off the loadmaster's hands and stabbed his thumb on it. "Here. Where's Ghorek?"

A dour nod. "At the auction house. I'd steer clear if I were you."

Varro started walking away, his 'bodyguards' in tow. "I have to save my business. I can't wait for Ghorek to be in the mood for a talk."

Another shrug. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

The auction house was a noisy, dirty and chaotic place, and it doubled as the main forum where people got up to speed with the latest news — now more so than usual. There were few stocks up for auction today, the hall crowded instead with 'businessmen' and their guards. Some were visibly angry, others as obviously worried, and the token few with available merchandise were actually thrilled with the current state of affairs.

T'Perro and Vasir committed every face they saw to memory, and kept their ears open for rumors, picking up some further details as Varro navigated the crowd. Tarak and Vorhess had contacts in the Blue Suns, and they had started using some of their ships to move their abhorrent stocks around. Apparently this had come back to bite them in the rear big time — their ships had been found adrift in space on a little traveled trade lane in Sahrabarik, both slavers gone along with their crews and their merchandise.

The batarian called Ghorek was in a VIP area of sorts, his lounge raised and separate from the common area. He had an irritated look to his face as he conferred with a salarian holding a datapad, clearly a bookkeeper of sorts. He did not turn around to greet the turian as he climbed the stairs to his lounge. "Come back in two days, Varro," he said dourly. "I don't have time or money for you now."

The turian received that with a grunt. "You'd better. I've already added the extra storage fees to your bill."

"I'll pay you what we agreed last week, plus a late fee as per our contract — and not another credit," was the seething answer. "Unless you want to become part of the stock."

Varro was certainly despicable for trading with slavers, but he was neither a coward, nor a dullard. "Then when I go back to Omega I'll say that Ghorek is a scammer who dumps his losses on his suppliers. That's going to do wonders for your cred."

The batarian was trapped, and he knew it. "_Half_ the storage fee. You don't want me to go broke if you hope to continue doing business here."

It was not ideal, but it was fair. "I can live with that," Varro agreed.

"Good," Ghorek breathed. "Now tell me what's the news from Aria."

"She's pissed," Varro said simply. "Lots of ships going missing. Colonies, too."

"Heard about Minamo."

"Ferris Fields, too."

A grunt. "This is bad for the business." He turned around, and noticed Varro's guards. He frowned and took a step closer: "Hold on a minute here—"

Vasir did not give him a chance. A striking viper would not have been anywhere near as fast as she darted forward and stabbed for his windpipe with two outstretched fingers. The impact paralyzed the batarian, who gulped for air and struggled to make his voice work to raise the alarm. Henchmen sitting and standing all around them reached for their guns, but T'Perro simply raised a clenched fist wreathed in blue flames and everyone froze in their tracks.

"So, Ghorek Chazzak, we meet again. How long has it been? Ten years, eleven years?" Shilyna smiled sneeringly. "You know who I am. You know what's gonna happen if anyone pulls out a gun."

The slaver was no fool. After a few further seconds he composed himself and raised an open hand slowly. His guards around understood and stood in place. Vasir released him then.

Ghorek glared angrily at T'Perro. "You must be mad to come here."

"Few things would make me happier than killing you and wiping the floor with your associates here," Shilyna admitted readily, "but we're all making concessions today."

"We're looking into the disappearing ships issue," Vasir added quietly.

The batarian smirked a hate-filled grin. "It pleases me to say I can't help you."

"You aren't interested in hearing what we know? Fine then." The ancient Spectre shrugged. "I guess we'll have to figure it out from your pieces."

"You can't hope to win against all of us." His voice was steady, but Ghorek was not so sure. He had personally experienced a crushing defeat at the hands of T'Perro years back, and knew how deadly the Spectre was.

"No, maybe not. But I'm old and cranky. And, Goddess spare me, I'm so tired of this chase. You're only alive because I can save a few hours cooperating with you."

Ghorek glanced briefly at the pale Varro and realized the turian had been duped into bringing the Spectres along. "Alright, I'll bite," he accepted.

"Does the name 'Rana Thanoptis' ring any bells?" Vasir asked.

Recognition flashed in the batarian's eyes. "She had a contract going with Tarak," he recalled. "He had gotten an order for humans. A big one, and only humans. Strange."

Neither T'Perro nor Vasir exteriorized any reactions. "And Nyxeris?" the former Spectre inquired.

This time the batarian shook his head. "No, that one's new to me."

"We heard you found his ship."

"His goons found it. We only got word here six hours ago. It's an empty wreck now."

"What can you tell us about Thanoptis' contract with him?" T'Perro asked next.

"She placed an order, offered to pay twenty percent more than market value for every healthy human delivered to her. Tarak was supposed to deliver the shipments to some coordinates near Omega. He had already made three deliveries, with two more to go." He reached carefully for his omni-tool and tapped a few commands, sending this data over to her. "This is _all_ we know about it. Now, _your_ part of the deal. What do you know?"

T'Perro briefly entertained the idea of lying to her enemy, but decided against it. "Someone's put out contract hits on key personnel of the Compact," she answered truthfully. "This Nyxeris she mentioned arranged for one hit. We traced it back to Rana Thanoptis. And now you just told us she's buying humans when two entire human colonies vanish without a trace."

Ghorek hated the Spectre, but not to the point that it clouded his judgment. He had a moment to feel ice in his marrow when he realized he had been brushed by something vastly more dangerous than his usual line of business. "You say she's involved in the ship hijackings too? She made Tarak disappear too?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," was the dry answer.

The batarian tilted his head slightly and stared quizzically for a moment, then understood. "You got bigger problems." _Bigger than our business, that is._

"Don't go thinking you'll get more freebies."

* * *

New Thebes — Anhur

"You plan on staying here much longer?" Abramowsky asked Oriana.

"I want to talk to Professor Welz," Lawson replied. "I've asked him to text me when he's available. He should be coming any time now."

Falcone stood and stretched. "I need to get some fresh air… how long's it going to take?"

"It shouldn't be more than 15 minutes. You guys go on, I'll catch up with you later."

Mariana and Ettore exchanged glances, then the girl shrugged. "Alright. We'll go to the Green Damsels and wait for you there. I want some pastry."

Lawson grinned. "Someone who eats so many sweets shouldn't be so thin."

"Some of us are born lucky," her best friend smirked smugly. "And you're not one to complain either."

"I work out and train nine days a week, fourteen months a year. I have every right to bitch and complain. Now go. Ettore, can I trust you to make sure there'll be any apple pie left for me?"

"I can make no promises," the Italian excused himself. "But I will try."

"Thanks a bunch," Oriana said morosely. Her friends laughed and walked away.

For a few minutes she focused on collating the latest data for her research, information she had collected from small colonies now flourishing on the Attican Traverse. When she had begun work on her thesis she had not really expected to break any new ground, but environmental engineering was still a relatively new field of study, and the sheer variety of worlds now accessible to humanity meant that, more often than not, the hallmark of a good colonist was her creativity to come up with answers to problems no other human being had yet faced.

Some things were simply a matter of proper gene editing. To paraphrase one fictitious Prokhor Zakharov, genomes were not blueprints for features, there was no gene for an elephant's trunk that they could simply splice into a bird to get birds with trunks. Genes codified proteins, and in this fashion wheat could be made to prosper on hostile soil, or to produce certain nutrients and enzymes.

But seeding plant life was but one aspect of environmental engineering. It was not just plants that had to be implanted on alien worlds if they were to be terraformed. The microorganisms that coexisted symbiotically with a plant had to be introduced too, and so had to be the insects and animals that contributed to pollination and spread.

As she systematized the problems and challenges of terraforming, a novel idea had started taking shape. Settling a new kind of planet meant careful tuning of the supporting ecosystem that needed to be introduced if humanity was ever going to walk freely on said planet — without the need for environmental suits or shielded domes, that was. Such initiative was an expensive and time-consuming ordeal, an approach only available to wealthy enterprises. Instead, she wanted to come up with a self-adjusting solution, and so she had focused her attention on the most resilient forms of life humans had come across ever since founding their first colony outside Earth, looking for underlying patterns. Lichens had turned out to be a kind of life form that flourished pretty much anywhere, and a prime target for her research. What if, she had wondered, she could come up with an implantable ecosystem, a combination of microbial and animal life, whose foundation was a lichen that needed no external adjustment to thrive?

To say that it was a monstrously complex challenge did not do it justice, and her professors had not been skeptical as much as they had been astounded by the scope of the task she had set herself to. She had been cautioned not to dream too big, but it was too late to stop now, even more so now that her research was starting to bear fruit.

She had thus compiled and collated data from two colonies when she realized that half an hour had passed since Mariana and Ettore had left. In annoyance, she lifted her eyes off her tablet computer, tapped her omni-tool and—

_Mariana forgot her tablet? Why didn't she message me about it?_

As she reached to pick it up from the desk, the tablet computer lit up. Simultaneously, the screen depicting the graphs and data she had been working on vanished.

She was less annoyed or concerned than perplexed by this development, but she was well and truly surprised when the following message appeared on her own screen:

* * *

_Hello, Oriana. Your friend did not forget her tablet. It was stolen and subtly modified so this message would reach you._

_This might sound suspicious to you, and it's understandable. If you do not want to hear the rest of this message, put the tablet down now. Nobody will hear about this, neither your guards nor Mariana._

* * *

It was, indeed, mightily suspicious, but Oriana picked up a few hints. It was not their friends, unless it was an elaborate prank on their part — but neither Mariana nor Ettore spoke using these words, much less typed like that. And it was not anyone involved with her retinue of guards either.

Curiosity got the better of her, but she was careful not to appear shocked. Clearly someone was watching her, someone other than Selina's guards. She did not fear for her safety, for they always were around her or near her. If anything, she did not want them forcibly extracting her from college grounds.

* * *

_I've been watching you for a time now. I know you've been leading a secluded life and that you chafe under all the restrictions placed upon you. I also know that occasionally you think of escaping your current life._

_I can make that happen._

_You need not answer now. But before going on further, knowing if you at least are interested in entertaining the idea is necessary. Run one of your hands through your hair if you do._

* * *

Miranda's eyes were glued on the screen.

Her sister was staring at her tablet, rereading the message again and again.

…

…

Finally, after what amounted to an eternity, she…

…ran her right hand through her hair.

* * *

_Thanks for your understanding. I please ask that you are patient and discrete. If Selina catches a whiff of this you will be taken away._

_I promise to explain more later._

_Love, your sister._

* * *

Oriana stared at the screen for another ten seconds.

If this was indeed a prank, it was a creative one. Or a cheap cliché. Or both.

Then her omni-tool rang: "Ori? My tablet should be around there but I can't raise it, maybe I forgot to recharge it? Would you care to look around?"

She tapped her omni-tool to answer: "Yeah, I have it here." She looked back at her own: the message had vanished. She did not allow the surprise to disrupt her and continued smoothly: "I'll give it to you when I get there."

"Oh, thank you! I'll save another slice of apple pie for you. What's taking so long?"

"I don't know. Professor Welz still hasn't texted me—" her omni-tool rang again as she spoke "—oh, there he is. I suppose I'll be there in twenty minutes or so."

* * *

_Author's note: _again, a huge kudos for **brokenLifeCycle** for setting aside some time to proofread my text.

Now, I guess I ought to acknowledge this chapter's shout-outs:  
\- Academician Prokhor Zakharov is the leader of the University of Planet on **Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. **If you haven't yet played it, DO IT.  
\- The 'Green Damsels' are based on a _monumentally good_ pastry shop I had the immense fortune of visiting in München, **Fräulein Grüneis. **If by, per chance, you live around, go to the English Gardens and buy yourself a slice of apple pie. And say hi.


	8. Incident file: Freedom's Progress

Freedom's Progress — Omega Nebula 

The shuttle did not so much as touch the ground. It hovered in position as ten shapes jumped out, then it took off with a muffled sound of pulsing engines, to vanish into the night.

Tali'Zorah vas Neema hid behind a rock, and from her perch atop the hill she spied the settlement two kilometers away. Freedom's Progress was small, one of many independent initiatives that had sprung up on the Terminus Worlds like mushrooms. Some flourished. Some failed.

The night lights seemed cozy to her eyes. An omni-tool command, and the HUD on her helmet zoomed in on the settlement. The buildings and vehicles she could see looked in good shape. Pristine, even.

But…

Why would a housing have its doors and windows wide open and the lights on in the small hours of the morning?

_Something is off. _

Tali dreaded having arrived too late. A digital query: the signature of Veetor'Nara's implants placed him somewhere down there.

Prazza knelt next to her. "It doesn't look like there's anyone awake there."

Slowly she stood up. "Veetor's signal comes from that place," she said resolutely. "We have to get down there." She took a cursory glance at her team. She had brought two squads, one under her direct command, the other under Prazza's. They were veteran Flotilla marines, not improvised militia, but a far cry from the elite soldiers next to whom she had served during her stint on the Compact nonetheless.

Said stint had made her one of the most experienced and skilled quarians on the Flotilla when it came to military tactics and small deployments — to her displeasure. She had never wanted to be a soldier.

But a soldier was what a rescue mission called for. "Chatika, show me the local map." Her tech drone obliged on the spot and projected a chart of the settlement and the surrounding environs on the ground.

A large part of the colony was highlighted in yellow. "Veetor is somewhere in this area. We haven't been able to get an accurate fix on his position, and we don't know why, so we'll assume the worst and suppose something has happened here." Tali pointed at a small hill to the north of the town. "This is the extraction point. We go together there, then we try to make contact with the locals. Prazza, you'll take your squad east, while I'll go west. We'll adjust our routes once we pinpoint Veetor's location."

The marines crowded around her bowed their heads in acknowledgment. "Alright," Prazza said curtly. "Let's get going."

Like most quarians, Tali tended to feel too exposed and naked whenever surrounded by nature instead of corridors and bulkheads, but in her case, it was less acute than the norm. Prazza and the others were also used to it, some of them veterans with more years of planetary operations than Tali was old. There was always that nagging feeling hovering at the edges of conscious thought, that longing for a world to call their own, but no one put it into words. There was only one world that would really suit them — only one world to call home.

Rannoch.

Would she ever be able to take off her helmet and breathe the air of her homeworld, she again wondered distantly, as her unconscious self was in charge of managing her combat-sharpened senses and scanned the landscape for signs of danger.

Few on the Flotilla really believed they would live to see it. One thing the Alliance had shared with them via the Compact was their assessment of the military strength of the geth, obtained from observations garnered by the omnics that had visited Tikkun with Zenyatta. Even if the Shambali had claimed to have seen more stockpiles of raw materials and construction machinery than military hardware, what they had actually seen was enough to put the geth armada at least on par with the turians.

And directly witnessing their ships in action near the relay leading to Ilos and near Ilos itself had allowed Tali to gauge their power. Pound for pound, one of their destroyers was a match for a quarian cruiser — which was expected, as most quarian ships were vintage in design and kept operational through refits and intensive maintenance.

But hard confirmation of their estimates had been disheartening nonetheless.

And yet, to her own surprise, she had hope. The Council had apparently believed the Alliance's assessment (which was to say, they had apparently believed _an AI's assessment on other AIs _), because all they had done in response was to conduct some limited reconnaissance. The geth had been similarly staid, only deterring whatever interlopers they intercepted with warning salvos — a radical departure from their usual behavior, which had been to summarily and efficiently vaporize anyone they caught, as Tali had heard time and time again while growing up. Quarians who went into the Perseus Veil did so knowing they took their lives into their own hands. But now?

Then there was the revelation of how they had known of Tali's own intrusion, and how they had allowed her to complete her mission and depart with the data that ultimately had allowed the Compact to go after Saren.

The Admiralty board was still debating how to respond to these developments. Tali was undecided herself, though often her musings circled around an as-yet uncertain idea…

_If I were to approach them… how would they react? _

Then the crest of the hill that was their extraction point loomed before her eyes, and any thoughts not relevant to this mission were boxed away. She gestured rightward with her left palm, and Prazza took his squad in that direction without a word.

After a painstakingly slow approach and numerous scans to make sure there were no automated defenses armed nearby, they reached the walls of the closest building. It was a tool shed of some kind, the walls made of cheap sheet metal, with a single window on their side. The lights inside were on.

One of Tali's troopers deployed a scout drone, and very carefully used it to peek inside the shed. After a few seconds he gestured with his hands: _clear. _

His commander nodded and gestured in response: _Let's move out. _

The next structure across the street was a small apartment building. The same sequence repeated itself: they cautiously moved about, looking, listening, scouting. Again, the building was clear.

So was the next one, and the one after it, and another, and another.

The colony was empty.

Or almost so. After clearing another housing, they again waited for their scout to deploy his drone and explore the nearby surroundings for hazards—

—and a burst of gunfire narrowly missed the tiny spheroidal flyer as it tried to cross a street. "Alliance sentinel drones, five of them," the scout reported. He patched through his sensor feed to the rest of his squad.

"Attempting override." One of the troopers under Tali's direct command was an engineer. She peeked through a window, tapped her omni-tool a few times—

—and her attempt not only failed, but also attracted the attention of their targets: "INCOMING!"

Everyone dove for cover inside the small living room. A barrage of plasma blasts exploded against the wall outside.

"Someone has reprogrammed these drones using our own methods!" the engineer noted.

"That must have been Veetor," a marine observed. "On target!" He loosed a burst on a drone that was positioning itself to flank them, blowing it to bits.

If Veetor'Nara had hacked the drones, then he had surely done it to protect himself, and most certainly something very serious had happened here—but _what? _Tali could not figure it out. The guns of these drones left bullet holes and scorch marks, and they had not seen any battle damage yet.

But that was for later. Right now she had to dispose of the drones. She sent out her own to draw enemy fire, and as they shooted at it she targeted the two furthest from them with a focused electrical blast. One of her targets exploded on the spot. The other, thrown away by the shockwave, wobbled jerkily in midair for an instant and tried to get out of sight, but their marksman seized the distraction and fired a high-powered Mantis round at it. The drone was shielded, but for the good it did, it could as well have had none.

The rifleman and the scout made short work of the remaining hostiles. The scout again took his time exploring their surroundings, being even more wary and cautious now. An entire minute of silence passed before he said reluctantly: "Clear."

Tali nodded. "Good work, everyone." She keyed Prazza: _Be on the lookout. There are active security drones around and they don't ask questions. Don't try to hack them. _

_Understood, _came the answer.

Then the rhythmic noise of an approaching voidcraft reached them.

_We have unknown inbounds, _Prazza warned over the squad network and attached a picture. A small, unassuming shuttle. A Kodiak. Tali quickly scanned it for crests or identifiers: none.

_Avoid detection, _she ordered. If they were locals returning, she did not want to be mistaken for looters or raiders. Which would probably happen anyway. The quarians' practice of strip mining asteroids and deserted worlds —and no few clashes with people laying claim to those stellar bodies— had fueled rumors depicting them as such.

Both squads laid low and waited, in opposite parts of the town, for the shuttle to arrive. They saw it circle around the colony twice, before landing on a square closer to Tali's team.

Having unknowns show up mid-mission was a contingency they had planned for. Still she cursed to herself.

One of her troopers asked, using a very short-range transmitter to make sure her message only reached Tali's team: _Raiders? _

_Very stupid ones if they are, _Tali answered. If this place was a trap, then that shuttle would be a fat target the moment it landed. _If they aren't locals, they know more about what happened here than we do. _

Since the shuttle had touched down near them, it fell upon her to attract their attention, and so make sure the other half of the team was free to complete their mission. The only real way those people knew more about what had transpired in this colony was if they were somehow responsible for it, and she would act according to that assumption. The safety on her plasma shotgun went off, and so did those on the weapons of her soldiers.

They entered yet another empty building. This time the signs of something being horribly wrong were jarring. Breakfast had been set on a table in a living room, a typically human one if she remembered right — bread, canned fruit juice, and a mixture of grains and seeds she knew they called muesli. Nothing wrong there—except that it was a few hours before midnight. Then, right next to the dining table, the fragments of a decorative vase lay on the floor. Tali looked around. No signs of battle… no. There was one — a single bullet hole on the ceiling.

_What… *happened*… here? _

Then they heard the sound of a door opening somewhere else in the house. Quickly they all took defensive positions and waited.

Tali's finely tuned senses quickly picked up on cues. The unseen others were being singularly… careless. They were making just too much noise, and…

…and not really paying much attention to the rooms they traversed…

…as they headed their way.

A door slid open on the corridor adjoining the living room. Light flooded in…

"Quarians! We mean no harm! We are coming in!" a voice called out.

A _stridently familiar _voice.

Tali'Zorah went rigid.

_That's… that was… _

A human clad in powered armor walked in, holding a hardlight caster above her head.

On top of rigid, Tali now also went livid and pale.

In disbelief, she stood up slowly from her cover behind a couch, and hesitantly stepped forward:

"S… Shepard?!"

The woman before her grinned broadly. She put her gun away and, heedless of the quarian guns trained on her, walked up to Tali and hugged her tightly.

The overwhelmed Tali'Zorah needed a few moments to adjust. Then tears spilled. "I was… I was at your funeral. On the Citadel." There was not a shadow of a doubt in her mind regardless, yet she still asked in shock: "Is it… is it really you, Shepard?"

A tear welled up and rolled down the woman's right cheek in turn.

"I'm damned happy to see you too, Tali."

Now it was the quarian that squeezed her former commander, comrade and… _friend... _in a tight hug. She finally found her words again: "Me too."

Then she let go. "It's… it's no coincidence that I meet you here, isn't it?"

The joy of the reunion fled from Aaliyah Shepard's face. "I knew it was you the moment I landed here, but… honestly, I can't say. Sombra tipped us about this place."

The face of the hacker prodigy flashed in Tali's mind and she nodded. "You can't say she hasn't somehow eavesdropped on our comms." She felt the unease that rippled through her men upon hearing those words, but there was little that could be done about it. So far, there had been exactly one person that had managed to outsmart that girl — or, more properly, that had gotten the girl to outsmart herself: Saren Arterius.

Or had it been Reaper — the dreaded nemesis of Overwatch, the elite anti terror corps that had preceded Starwatch and the Compact?

Then she noticed the other people that were with Shepard, and she again went pale inside her helmet. She was transported back to those horrible hours after their fateful deployment to Garvug.

Many had died on that mission. Including the two that were there standing before her now.

Amari and Shimada.

The ninja noted her disbelief and smiled behind his mask. "_Konbanwa, _Tali-sama," he said with a polite half-bow. "It warms my heart to see you are doing well."

Layali Amari, clad in her flight suit as usual and loaded for bear, gave her a curt nod instead. "We ought to socialize after our business here is done," she said dryly.

"Speaking of which," Shepard asked, "what brings you here?"

The question earned her some hard looks from Tali's men, but her friend answered earnestly: "A distress call. A quarian on his Pilgrimage is somewhere in this colony." She glanced at the table where the breakfast sat untouched. "We hope. With this thing about human colonies being found empty…"

Shepard nodded. "This is the third place where it happens. We wanted to investigate before anyone else arrived and tainted whatever evidence we can find of… _whatever _happened here." She glanced at Tali's squad. "You're back with the Flotilla… We'll have to do some catching up, but as Amari said, we got business first. How can we help?"

Tali sensed the restlessness of her men, so she decided to err on the side of caution. "Just keep us posted. There's some kind of jamming here that prevents us from pinpointing where the distress signal is coming from. If you find anything that could assist us in our mission—"

"We'll tell you about it." Shepard had also noted the distrust of Tali's squad, and understood. "We'll begin our search on the western part of the colony and stay out of your way."

"Thank you. We'll also tell you if we find proof of what happened here."

"We'd appreciate that." She smiled. "Great to see you again, Tali."

The quarian girl smiled in turn. It was not the appropriate moment or situation to feel overcome with joy, but so she was. "Great to see you too, Shepard. Stay in touch."

Tali watched Shepard and her team go with a twinge of longing on her chest, but she was a commander herself now with a mission of her own. "Alright, people, you've heard it. Let's move."

Her team was still uneasy. "Trusting them is reckless," said their scout.

The quarian girl felt a surge of indignation, and her voice showed it. "Kal'Reegar…," she said slowly and deliberately, then her tone rose in pitch: "When I was selected for my first planetary mission they told me I had to obey orders, not that I had to like them."

The man recoiled as if he had been slapped and squared himself. "You're right. I apologize," he said tersely. "I will report this when we return to the Flotilla regardless."

"You do what you have to do," she acknowledged him testily, "but right now I am in charge. So move it."

Tali noticed the brief hesitation of the rest. They would have backed Kal'Reegar if he had challenged her further, she realized, but as he backed down no one spoke up in his stead. She groaned to herself, knowing she would have to discipline these men later, but then locked that ugly thought away and again concentrated on their mission.

They had cleared two more buildings without coming across anything noteworthy when some rifle shots echoed to their west. Some bursts of automatic fire and a few detonations followed, then Tali recognized the report of Amari's powerful anti-matériel railgun and the noises died away. A text message flashed on her omni-tool: _More sentry drones, _Shepard told her. _I think your friend has been in this dormitory. We found some message exchanges on a terminal. Sending them over to you now. _

_Thanks, _she replied gratefully. She went over the messages. There was nothing interesting there. Veetor, being the tech savant he was, had been asked a few times by the locals to help them fix misbehaving machinery. She wondered briefly why had Shepard sent her this, then she understood: if her former superior in the Compact withheld anything from her and her fellows learned of it later on, it would do no good to her reputation as a commander.

More detonations again rent the nightly quiet asunder, only more distant now — and to their east. The first few shots were answered with a long and buzzsaw like barrage and a series of powerful explosions. "That's Prazza's squad!" Tali exclaimed. She queried them on the squad network, but there was no response. The exchange had now become a furious firefight. She swore in her language, then harangued her team: "We're needed! Move!"

Quickly, Kal'Reegar released several scout drones ahead of them. Two ran into groups of security drones, but the other three charted a safe path for them. In this fashion they raced through the deserted settlement and arrived before a large hangar, one guarded by a trifecta of YMIR heavy mechs — just in time to see one of Prazza's men cut down by another machine-gun burst.

Tali blanched. From her position in cover, she looked for signs of the rest. She only recognized Prazza's bluish suit as he lay face down on the dirt, his back an ugly mess of bullet holes. "_Keelah… _why didn't you wait for us!?" she let out in horror.

The mechs had taken note of the newcomers at well. Two of them started moving towards their position, one of them laying down a deadly stream of gunfire as it advanced. "We have to pull back!" their sniper shouted. "We cannot fight back against that volume of fire!"

Then the second mech advancing in their direction stopped, looked upwards and fired a burst at the night sky. Half a dozen railgun rounds punched cleanly through its optics and machine gun arm in response. The robot clumsily stepped sideways, trying to get out of the line of fire — without reacting to the blur that quickly dashed towards it and attached something to the servos of its left leg. A violent explosion sent the heavy mech flying in pieces.

"We got help!" Tali exclaimed. "Keep the others distracted!"

With their resolve restored by the intervention of Shepard's team, the quarians rejoined the fight. The mech advancing on them ceased fire briefly and brought its twin missile launcher to bear, but before it could fire at them their engineer unleashed an electrical discharge upon it, momentarily overloading its shields — and the sniper, having expected that opening, let loose a single round that blew the optics to bits. Exhaust gases blazed in the night as the rockets launched, but one merely slammed itself against the wall of a nearby building and the other corkscrewed skywards, as the combined efforts of the quarian marines deprived them of guidance.

Then a blue-greenish light blazed in the darkness elsewhere. The robot froze in its steps. It let out a disagreeable noise of straining machinery, then the shrill sound of twisting metal filled the night and sparks flew as the mech turned into a tightly packed lump.

From a street opposite Tali's, Shepard and Shimada appeared, their attention focused on the third YMIR mech. The huge robot had its back turned to them and had apparently ignored the destruction of its fellows, instead aiming its weapons at the garage doors of a small housing.

"What's it doing?" one of Tali's riflemen asked.

"Look at its gun arms," their sniper pointed out. They moved very slightly, upwards and downwards, just a few centimeters each time.

"It's… it's broken?" Kal'Reegar said in wonder.

They saw Shepard approach the mech alone, the robot oblivious to her presence. A few more seconds of tension, then the former commander of the Compact took a biotic-powered leap, landed on its back, tore out a thick armor plate and flung it away, and unplugged something inside the robot. The mech powered down on the spot.

"Clear!" she shouted for Tali's benefit.

The quarian girl raced on the spot towards the limp shapes of her fallen men. Neither moved. She knelt weakly next to Prazza's body and stared skywards: "Why, _keelah, _why?! Why did you have to be so reckless?!"

The rest of her own squad approached her. The engineer addressed her. Or tried to, as she stumbled with words: "I… I told Prazza of the encounter with Shepard. He, he tried—tried to complete the mission by himself."

Tali sprang to her feet: "You did *_WHAT*?! _" she shouted. Her men jolted under the tongue-lashing. "What in the ancestors' name were you thinking?!"

"I was concerned—"

"_Shut up! _" With furious strides, she stomped towards the engineer and tore her submachine gun off her hands. "You're under arrest for insubordination and reckless endangerment," she said tersely. "You'll be imprisoned until the Admiralty Board passes judgment on you." Then she glared at the others. "Did you know?"

Slowly and reluctantly, the rest nodded, except for Kal'Reegar.

"Why didn't you stop her?" she demanded.

Nobody answered.

Ruthlessly she glared at each of the guilty marines in turn, but before she could say anything at them Shepard called out: "Tali! There's more of your men here!"

As one, the quarians raced towards her. Shimada and she were next to the open garage doors of the small housing the now-depowered YMIR mech had been staking out. The remaining three members of Prazza's team were inside, one of them badly wounded but still alive. She exhaled in relief. "Thank you so much for your help, Shepard."

"Don't mention it," the woman acknowledged her quietly. "I'm sorry. We couldn't get to you any faster."

"Don't be. You did more than enough already." She sighed. "_Keelah… _I can understand not believing you're real or trustworthy… but to _go behind_ _my back?_" She shook her head.

Shimada nodded. "It is an ugly affair. And it's sadly going to worsen."

Amari landed next to them. "The rest of the security drones and mechs are sticking to their positions," she reported. "We're safe for now."

"Good. Keep an eye out here. Report anything that happens." The jumpjet trooper acknowledged her with a nod. Aaliyah turned then towards Tali. "We're going to inspect the hangar the mechs were guarding. Coming?"

"Yes, please." Tali turned towards Kal'Reegar in turn. "You're in charge until I come back. When you draft your report make sure to include everything that's just happened."

"Understood," the man acknowledged her. There was guilt in his voice as well. Probably nothing of this would have happened if he had not doubted her leadership and decisions, and he knew it.

The hangar had thick walls and heavy blast doors, and yet these opened on their own with a grate of groaning gears as Shepard approached. Its cavernous insides were shrouded in darkness. They turned on their lamps, and saw the place was a vehicle workshop of sorts, with shelves and racks bearing tools and boxes everywhere, a pit for a mechanic to work under vehicles and two large workbenches, a partially disassembled machine of some kind on top of one.

There was a small, elevated office against the back of the hangar. They made their way towards it and opened the door carefully. It was as dark there as it was outside.

"Veetor!" The quarian that Tali's team had been dispatched to rescue was huddled against a corner, sitting on the floor, knees huddled against his chest. She ran toward him: "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

Quickly it appeared that the man was incoherent. "So many of them… they took them all… so many of them… they took them all… so many of them… "

"So many of them? Who's 'them', Veetor?" she asked nicely — or tried to. The tensions of the moment only made her voice sound that more disquieting to Veetor's ears, as he huddled himself tighter against the corner and refused to speak any further.

Then she heard Shepard's voice: "Tali… I think both our answers are here."

She turned around. Shepard had been working on a desktop terminal with several screens. The images on display there were ghastly: the security cameras had been dutiful witnesses to the horror that had transpired there. Swarms and swarms of small flyers had flown about, like the ones they had first seen when Sovereign and Reaper had assaulted the Erinyes asteroid base, stinging everyone they could find and so encasing them in stasis fields. And, walking among them, other insectoid figures that no one recognized:

Shimada put into words the thoughts in all their heads: "What in the name of all gods are those things?"

He unpaused the recording and zoomed in on one of the insectoids. It had a roughly humanoid shape and size, with two arms, two legs, a head, and a humanlike gait, but the similarities ended right there. All of them had black chitinous exoskeletons with brown and purplish hues to them, an extra pair of vestigial arms, and two pairs of gossamer wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. Four glowing yellow eyes lined their heads, arranged in pairs. They wielded firearms of different sizes but not of any design or model that they knew of.

Tali was about to say that she had never seen anything like it, but she did not — there _was _something vaguely familiar about it. The shape of the sloping, tapering head; the four eyes; the four-fingered hands, with two opposable thumbs each…

She looked at Shepard. "Correct me if I'm wrong," she almost whispered, "but… doesn't this creature resemble Javik a bit?"

The former commander of the Compact was staring intently at the picture. "Yeah, it looks like him." But it was not a prothean, and everyone saw it. Javik's skin was scaly instead of chitinous, and he had no wings, unlike this creature. And, whatever this creature was, it lacked a prothean's mouth in turn, having instead a small pair of spider-like chelicerae.

Aaliyah straightened up, her grim eyes still focused on the screen. "I think we've found who's responsible for the abductions. Whatever they are."

Tali saw her and the ninja look and nod at each other. Curiosity got the better of her: "What are you going to do next? Are you returning to the Compact?" As she spoke, she realized she had not asked the question that she wanted to ask most of all: "What happened…? Did you die… if you're here, you didn't die, didn't you?"

She heard her friend grunt in amusement. "One question at a time, Tali. About the Compact, I… I don't know. I heard Javik's in charge and running things now. If there's a commander already I'd only get in his way." Shepard shook her head. "No, not for the time being." Then she took a deep breath. "As to what happened to me… that's a long and very weird story. I think we have more urgent matters at hand. It'll have to wait."

The quarian wanted to know more but could not dispute the point. She then again knelt next to Veetor. He was still huddled tightly against the corner, still unresponsive, knees pressed against his chest. "How did he escape the attack?"

Shimada looked around, then through the single window in that small office. He took note of the partially disassembled machine on top of one of the workbenches. On a corner of that workbench, a thermal bottle and a cooler had been neatly stacked on top of each other. Labels bearing quarian script had been affixed to either. "This is Veetor's working space. I might be mistaken, but I believe he was in the midst of a repair job when the attack started. His immediate reaction was to seek shelter and hide, then to try and send the drones after the invaders. But either his programming failed to identify the attackers as the enemy… or they disabled the drones in turn and reprogrammed them to ambush anyone coming to help. Probably he escaped detection because of his suit — thanks to it, he has a very reduced biological signature. And this hangar is sturdy and has thick walls. It's quite possible that reduced his profile enough for his suit to obscure it completely."

Tali toyed briefly with Shimada's analysis and found no flaw in it. "You're probably right." She turned then again to the catatonic quarian on the corner. "Come on, Veetor, get up. We're going to get you home. Come."

"No! They'll find me there and… get them too… they'll catch everyone and take them away—"

"Veetor, look at me." The former commander of the Compact knelt next to Tali so she would be at eye level with the frightened quarian. "Freedom's Progress is the third human colony that vanishes," she said very slowly, her eyes staring into his. "Ferris Fields and Minamo were struck first. These… _things — _" she gestured at the screens "—are not interested in quarians, only humans. The Flotilla is probably the safest place for you to be."

Tali saw how Veetor returned the stare in catatonic fascination for what seemed to be endless seconds. Then he started shuffling with his left arm: "Then… you'll need this. I took measurements… scans… collected data. It will help you…" He then struggled to his feet, and handed her his omni-tool. Shepard thanked him with a nod.

"This will come in handy." She tapped a few commands on her own omni-tool to make a snapshot of the data on Veetor'Nara's, and then handed it back. "Thanks. I'll have time to digest the data later." She said next to Tali: "I'll send you whatever I find."

The quarian girl was unsettled. "You really believe it's only humans they're interested in?"

"For the time being," she heard Shepard say. "But this is just the opening move. Abducting whole colonies _en masse _will _not _go unnoticed. If they're doing it anyway…" A deep exhalation. "Whoever they are, they don't give a damn about any potential retaliation. No one in this galaxy has that much juice."

Tali thought she had understood where Shepard's train of thought was going:

"Except for the Reapers."

A heavy nod, followed by another deep breath. "Except for the Reapers."

* * *

Blackburn/Lawson residence — New Thebes, Anhur 

Oriana was trying hard to focus on her studies and failing. The messages she had gotten three days hence had vanished from her tablet computer and from Mariana's, as if they had never been sent. While not specialized in that kind of technology, she knew her way around such devices; a colonist would have to know how to repair and maintain these things, she had reasoned, even if she would not probably be one but someone designing colonies instead.

But her digging had yielded no results, and that had been frustrating. Whoever claimed to be her sister was a bona fide specialist on the matter, or had some serious support on that side.

She was puzzled, confused, and slightly irritated. It had been… what, decades now? A very long time had passed since she had been confronted with an enigma she could not crack.

Not being able to discuss it with anyone only worsened her mood. Plus, she had to conceal all these emotions from Selina and the rest of the house staff and the security detail, and it was taking a toll on her. So far she had been able to pass it off as stress caused by the intense efforts she was dedicating to her thesis, but that excuse would not work for long.

So when the bell rang, she was actually relieved that there was something to distract her recalcitrant mind from wrestling with this intractable riddle.

"I'll take it, Chanelle," she said to the maid as she went down the stairs.

"Are you sure, miss?" the mature woman asked solicitously.

"Yes, I need the distraction."

The maid gave her a knowing nod. "You know I don't tell you anymore. But I still believe you study too hard."

Oriana smiled at her, thinking to herself what would Chanelle say if she knew what was really going through her head, and looked on the screen next to the door: it was… an asari?

"Hello? Who is it?"

"Oriana Lawson?" came the reply. "My name is Valena Danaan. I come with a proposal for you. May I come in?"

The name at once blazed in her mind. Valena Danaan had once been a legend, part of the asari-turian quick deployment task force sent to contain the crisis humans would later dub the First Contact War. She had faced the Overwatch elite in battle, become an instrumental piece of the initial cease-fire and migrated to Alliance space to live in self-imposed exile from her kind. Years later, when the Elysium incident had happened, she had been one of the first members of the nascent Compact, and had fought in nearly every major engagement with them until the showdown on the Citadel itself.

But then she had vanished. Along with Avitus Rix, Garrus Vakarian and several others, she had left the Compact and Citadel service even in the wake of Shepard's and Reyes' deaths. What had become of her was a mystery of sorts.

And now the same thought filled both her head and that of her eavesdropping sister two hundred meters away.

This legend was at her door.

"Please, come in."

* * *

_Author's note:_ again, **brokenLifeCycle **helped with comments and suggestions. Kudos to him.


End file.
